Covid hospitalisations in Australia hit new record, surpassing January peak

The number of Australians in hospital with Covid-19 has reached the highest point of the entire pandemic, according to data from CovidLive.

On Monday, there were 5,429 Covid patients in hospital, surpassing the previous record of 5,390 set in late January.

But while hospitalisations have hit a new peak, the number of patients in intensive care is down considerably, from 420 patients in January to 161 on Monday.

New South Wales accounted for more than 2,300 of those in hospital, but the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania were hard-hit on a per capita basis, with 162 and 183 hospitalisations respectively.

Since the beginning of March, the number of patients in hospital with Covid nationwide has not dropped below 2,000.

Nurses and doctors working in hospitals say the system is struggling, with patients left for days in the emergency wards because they cannot get a bed on a ward.

In Western Australia and Tasmania the current number of patients in hospital on Monday was double or triple what the number in early January was, according to the CovidLive data. Queensland, South Australia and the ACT have also set new records for the number of patients in hospital.

Hospitalisations in NSW and Victoria are yet to reach their previous peaks, but both are trending upwards.

Hospitalisation numbers are generally considered a trailing indicator of Covid waves, as they tend to lag cases by a couple of weeks.

You can see the latest numbers for each jurisdiction in the table below.

In January, Australia was recording up to 100,000 cases a day, but on Monday only 36,507 cases were officially recorded.

Deakin University chair of epidemiology, Prof Catherine Bennett, said it was likely there were similar numbers of Covid cases in the community now compared to January.

Bennett said Covid deaths peaked around two weeks after case numbers last peaked on 15 January.

Epidemiologist Prof Mike Toole said the lower rate of people in ICU is being driven by a mix of vaccines and the fact the disease is hitting older Australians in aged care harder.

He said a lot of patients in aged care would be treated in the facility, instead of being taken to hospital. This would depress the number of people going into the system.

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