NSW cases likely to peak next week

SYDNEY: Authorities in New South Wales, the epicentre of Australia’s biggest Covid19 outbreak, said yesterday daily infections were expected to peak next week, as they seek to speed up immunisations ahead of easing restrictions.

Australia is trying to contain a third wave of infections that has locked down its two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, and its capital Canberra, putting more than half its 25 million population under lockdown.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the Government’s modelling revealed the state would require its highest number of intensive care beds in early October, with ‘‘additional pressure on the system’’ in the next few weeks.

Daily cases in Sydney’s worstaffected suburbs are expected to rise to as high as 2000 until the middle of this month, the modelling showed.

‘‘I do want to qualify that to say that modelling depends on a number of things, a number of variables . . . if too many of us do the wrong thing, there are too many superspreading events, we could see those numbers higher,’’

Berejiklian said during a media briefing in Sydney.

A total of 1071 Covid19 cases are in hospitals in the state at present, with 177 people in intensive care, 67 of whom require ventilation. Officials have said they had quadrupled ICU beds to about 2000 in the state early last year to handle the pandemic.

NSW reported 1281 new cases yesterday, most of them in Sydney, down from 1485 a day earlier. Five new deaths were recorded.

Victoria reported 246 new cases yesterday, its biggest daily rise of the year.

In total, Australia has recorded about 63,000 Covid19 cases and 1044 deaths from the virus.

Officials are trying to accelerate vaccinations to help minimise deaths and hospital admissions, the federal Government pledging more freedom of movement once 70% to 80% of the population aged over 16 is vaccinated.

Just over 38% of Australia’s adult population has been fully vaccinated; the country is expected to reach 70% by early November at current rates.

Last week, Australia entered into vaccine swap deals with Britain and Singapore for a total of about 4.5 million doses of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine, double this month’s supply.

Nearly half a million doses, the first batch of shipments, arrived on Sunday night.

‘‘There will be another set of flights in a couple of days, but we’ll pretty much be getting a million of the four million every week over the next four weeks,’’ vaccination taskforce head Lieutenantgeneral John Frewen told the ABC.

Under the vaccine swap deals, Australia will return equivalent numbers of PfizerBioNTech vaccines to Britain and Singapore later this year.

Frewen said one million doses of Moderna would also arrive in ‘‘a week or so’’, becoming the third vaccine to join Australia’s rollout along with Pfizer and AstraZeneca shots. — Reuters