too true, we must look like a bunch of incompetent fools to the rest of the world having one snake with several heads that all need chopping off!

The next emergency appears to the be NSW hospital system. Seems to be on borrowed time sadly. Might be the big story of Q4.

Must be a very localised thing. A major Sydney hospital close to me had zero Covid patients as at yesterday arvo.

Westmead hospital has a covid outbreak there. Outpatient clincs have been moved Quodos(spelling) stadium, emergency cases are being redirected to concord.

The figures I saw a few days ago which are all online at nsw health. They have about 800 ICU bed over the whole state. about 100 are being used for covid and 300 are being used non covid. Apparently its ambulances being hit more atm, the ambulances are having to park up wait for a hours to get the patients into the hospital

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...b0c91d1a24cc90

First hand info; overnight Westmead, Napean, Concord and Blacktown were all turning away ambulances. 75% of Concord’s Covid patients arrived in the last 24 hours, all unvaccinated I might add. The dam is bursting. Get vaccinated to protect yourself and the entire health system is the message.
At this rate it won’t be long before we start hearing stories of people dying of other ailments because of not being able to be treated due to hospitals full of Covid patients.

If you think this is unique to Australia then you need to get out more.

If you need examples then please take a look at the individual states of the so-called USA or the provincial premiers of Canada.
Or Boris and Nicola, or ..............................

Gold Standard….

Queensland is going ahead and building a dedicated quarantine centre. I guess they are paying for it themselves as the feds have already said no to it.

oh, and the main reason Queensland is being so tough re border closures and are desperate to keep WuHu flu out is because their health system has been so badly managed and run down that if they had an outbreak like we have in nsw, their hospitals would already be overwhelmed. And not just some, the whole system. But don’t let the truth out. Shhhhh.

At least we only have 7 as against the 52 in the un-United States.

OK get it, some people will always hate regardless, last year NSW was largely open and free whilst VIC was largely closed, I would have thought a good effort - apparently not for some.
You want to hate/dislike GB, I'll dislike intensely DA for his obvious contempt for the Westminster system and embedded Ministerial responsibility (under which Australia/Victoria operates and from which he receives his considerable stipend), anyone who thinks "creeping assumption" is an acceptable recognition or understanding of Ministerial responsibility should do the majority in Australia a favour and piss off to China where you can discuss controlling the peasants with Xi Jinping to your hearts content.
Please don't return - and please take Chairman Dan with you.:ok:

The Delta variant is obviously CV19 on steroids - yes GB stuffed up BUT if not her someone else would have, the Delta strain cannot be eliminated unless hermit states with absolutely zero travel are created....until that one infected person wanders over the border into the hermit state, coughs on someone and Delta takes hold. Whether the hermit state natives would accept becoming a hermit state - or for how long - be interesting to observe.

If anything rather than dissing GB she should maybe be applauded - by stuffing up so badly she's forced the masses to decide whether ongoing, eternal lockdowns or vaccinations are the way to go. Gave the vaccine numbers/awarness the kick along it needed.
Who knows - maybe a well deserved acknowledgement in the Christmas honours for services to Australia.:eek: :D

Once all those who wish a vaccine are covered things will change, QF will have all staff vaccinated - and VA will have to follow or lose some market, ScoMo will win the election and use sticks/carrots to push forward the "re-opening" of Australia.
The majority of Australians will increasingly question the need for lockdowns once everyone vaccinated, how individual states Premiers deal with the peasant's expectation of "living with covid" will be interesting to observe.

Pleased to have straightened things out for the benefit of all Ppruners. No thanks required! ;)

I wouldn't get too cocky...It appears that it took a global pandemic to achieve that in NSW. WA has achieved that without Covid! Could explain why McGowan is so $hit-scared of it getting into WA....

09 Feb 2021 - Why ambulance ramping crisis is compromising patient safety
07 Mar 2021 - WA Election: AMA says WA's health system is heading towards crisis point
07 May 2021 - Another day of chaos at Perth hospitals as pressure in ED ramps up
05 July 2021 - Ambulance ramping leaves RFDS patients stuck in shed for hours
02 Aug 2021 - Ambulance ramping hits another high as unions slam government over hospital safety
05 Aug 2021 - Patient care threatened by ambulance ramping rise at Perth hospitals, paramedics claim

Hell, even the WA Health department's own data show around only 75% of all Emergency "Triage 2" cases are seen within the recommended time of 10 minutes over the last year.bAnd that figure has been trending lower over the last several years, too, according to the Federal Government's AIHW dataset....

And 4 in the UK

Every state has a problem with hospitals and ambulance ramping, every single one:

Brisbane hospital at 191 per cent capacity, wait times top several hours

Statistics reveal thousands of hours lost to ramping outside SA hospitals

Ambulance ramping at Royal Hobart Hospital hits nearly 10,000 hours in nine months

NSW hospitals running a 'crisis medical service', parliamentary inquiry into regional health care hears

Five-hour ambulance delays outside hospitals a ‘public health disaster’ (Victoria)

WA ambulance ramping at 'troubling' levels

Worsening situation at Royal Darwin Hospital

And that's because Australia has, for decades, relied on immigration to staff hospitals. A very (very) senior public servant then in the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing told me, a decade and a half ago, that without immigration Australia would not have a public hospital system.

The lazy way works until the source is closed off.

There was a news story yesterday that said Victoria is bringing in 350 medical staff from overseas (through our 'closed' borders of course) to help remove pressure from its hospital system.

Ambulance ramping and hospital bypass are common during peak periods in cities pre-covid. You can't just have a system that has capacity for extreme events and peaks on Fridays and weekends due to drunk idiots and thrill seekers, it would cost a fortune to maintain that over 365 days a year. Instead they share the load across a city with the triage system. Now covid presents extra problems in that processing inbound patients takes longer, due to having to quarantine them and make sure hospital staff and other patients are protected, therefore if a number of patients turn up at once, they will hold them on ramp while they process them in. This has knock on effects of taking ambulances off the road and tying up the ambulance system. Again proof that Covid imposes a lot of stress on the health system in all areas, even relatively small numbers.

One health official said earlier in the week, "if you ask the health minister if we have extra capacity the answer will always be yes". Why, because there is always capacity, it just might be eaten away if a sudden influx occurs in a short period of time and not enough staff are positioned for the event.

The least you could do, if you're trying to prove a point about ambulance ramping, is actually link to articles that discuss it. Or at least, compare apples with another fruit, not a vegetable...:ugh: Maybe, by using the comparisons provided by the AIHW or other federal government analytical datasets...

For example, not once in the ABC NSW article you linked to, does the word "ramp" appear...It's also a bid disingenious to try to prove your point about ramping by linking to an article that discusses issues at Griffth hospital, which serves a catchment of around 35,000 in the local area or Wee Waa- that doesn't even have a hospital and instead relies on a GP as does the vast majority of other small, regional areas, and trying to compare them to major metropolitan Perth or other metropolitan hospitals that have a catchment of several hundred thousand to nearing the million mark...

And in other news...We're over the 1,000 mark today, with 1,029 new cases... :*

Aged care is the same.

I feel your frustration, but to be clear, there were a lot of lessons learned in the VIC event, many mistakes made and many of those as a consequence of fatigue, many are still paying the price for that.

VIC should have been the last event of that magnitude in Australia. It isn't because not only did NSW fail to learn those lessons it thumbed its nose at them and rolled out the Gold Standard. In fairness I think it was scomo that labelled that.

We need a vaccine that works, lasts more than the current 5 months, prevents infection and therefore spread. I don't believe it's unreasonable for the other states to take all reasonable steps to remain Covid free at this time under the current circumstances, until at very least we are all vaccinated. To not do so means 15% longcovid with severe side effects and 30% with concerning side effects among the unvaccinated. a very big price to pay.

Yes. That's true as well (ruprecht re aged care).Yes 43I, but...

We're over 365 days into a pandemic, we need the extra capacity for at least another 365 days, and since when has spending a "fortune" been any impediment to the response to the pandemic?

It's not that hard to get into healthcare and start work, thing is, do you have the stomach to stay in the work, get abused and clean up **** daily for your job. Australia gets immigrants for hospital work, mostly because locals don't want to do it. The real issue is not immigrants but casualised workforce that are forced to work across multiple sites as they can't get enough livable hours on one facility, which from a healthcare point of view is just inviting the spread of disease like Covid.