Urgent warning

Heading into 5th Covid wave

A prominent epidemiologist says it is “obvious” Australia is heading into its fifth wave of Covid.

Over the past week, 38,226 cases were reported across Australia, with an average of 5461 cases per day.

While cases are spiking in almost every state and territory – including a 44 per cent spike in Tasmania – the seven-day rolling average of 5461 is well below the nation’s peak of more than 100,000 cases in January 2022.

University of South Australia Professor Adrian Esterman said it was already very clear a new wave was coming in South Australia, where infections were forecast to double in the next fortnight.

“It‘s pretty much clear now across the country we’re going into a fifth Omicron wave,” he told the ABC.

“We’ve seen numbers going up now for three weeks in a row.”

It comes as health authorities are also reporting an increase in cases of influenza and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).

“It’s a triple whammy at the moment,” Dr Esterman warned.

However, mandatory testing and isolation rules for those with symptoms have not been in place for some time, so it is unlikely the recorded cases are reflective of the number of people in the community who have the illness.

Approximately 218,000 doses of Covid vaccine have been administered over the past seven days adding to the more than 2.5 million adults who have received a booster dose since January.

The looming fifth wave will arrive in an entirely different landscape to the one before it.

This is after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared earlier this month that Covid-19 no longer represents a “global health emergency”.