The Northern Territory’s largest hospital has reopened two wards dedicated to treating COVID-19 patients, as a third wave of cases puts increasing pressure on the health system, leading to a "significant" rise in emergency department wait times.
The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of Omicron have been responsible for a surge of cases nationwide, with their ability to dodge the body's immune response meaning some people are being reinfected with COVID-19 just four weeks after recovering.
Cases in the Northern Territory have been sitting between 300 and 600 per day, with 71 people hospitalised on Tuesday.
The Australian Medical Association's NT branch president, Robert Parker, has warned that staff at the Royal Darwin Hospital are coming under immense pressure, with many also contracting the virus.
"The Territory's system is one of the busiest in Australia," he said.
Dr Parker said NT Health had begun to reactivate measures it had previously abandoned after the January wave, "as would be expected during a COVID spike".
"My understanding is at least two [COVID-19 wards are operating] at the moment," he said.
NT Health confirmed two dedicated COVID-19 wards were now treating patients.
Dr Parker said "bed buys" – when the Royal Darwin Hospital rents a hospital bed from the neighbouring Darwin Private Hospital to house public patients – were occurring.
"I'm not sure if the whole ward is involved now, but there certainly has been bed buys," he said.
Earlier this year, NT Health performed a bed buy over an entire ward of the Darwin Private Hospital, to keep non-COVID patients away from the infected.
Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said the government had a "positive partnership" with Darwin Private Hospital to help manage capacity.
"Our health system is agile and built to deliver quality patient care ... COVID-positive patients are not isolating at the private hospital,” she said.
Strain grows on health system
The upward trajectory in COVID-19 case numbers is putting further strain on the NT's already stressed hospital system, according to several of the territory's peak health bodies.
Australasian College for Emergency Medicine NT chair Stephen Gourley said the territory's emergency departments were struggling to keep up with the volume of patients presenting for COVID-19, as well as other illnesses and accidents, especially at a time when some staff were falling ill themselves.
"It's like a double whammy almost. We're getting all our usual busy [periods], but on top on that are also added the numbers of COVID, and they are increasing," he said.
He said the rise in presentations had already led to a "significant" increase in emergency department wait times.
"It's not quite at crisis point yet, but we're at a very high stress level at the moment, and the health system is very strained," he said.
"I think if you turn up to an emergency department you'll notice it yourself — you'll see you have to wait much much longer than what you would normally. And that's just a sign that we are really struggling to meet the demand.
"If you turned up [to emergency] with something which is not immediately life-threatening, but still needs some help, you may wait for many hours, many many hours."
'70 per cent of patients' positive
At the Palmerston GP Super Clinic south of Darwin, its local respiratory clinic is seeing unprecedented demand.
When most people would normally be seen at the respiratory clinic on the same day, its chief executive Robyn Cahill said wait times for care had blown out to between 24 and 48 hours.
"What we're doing at the moment is increasing resources in that area so we can increase availability," she said.
Ms Cahill said people coming into the respiratory clinic, who were mainly vulnerable and unwell, were testing positive for COVID-19 at a rate similar to that seen during the January wave of between 20 and 70 per cent.
"Influenza does seem to have settled down now but COVID seems to be on the rise," she said.
"It's quite concerning that we're having this spike in cases in the community at this point in time."
Ms Cahill pleaded with people to wear masks, but said it was encouraging that demand for booster vaccine doses had also increased in recent weeks.
Masks 'a useful tool'
In an interview on Tuesday, Chief Minister Natasha Fyles told ABC Radio Darwin the NT government was considering introducing stronger rules around masks in response to the rising case numbers.
"I think the tool that you might see would be masks," she said.
"But masks are a useful tool."
