South Australia has reported another two COVID-linked deaths and 4,594 new cases — the third-highest daily total of the pandemic.
A woman in her 90s who tested positive for the virus has died, SA Health said, along with a man aged in his 60s.
Earlier today, the state's Ambulance Employees Association (AEA) reported that a man in his 60s with COVID had died yesterday afternoon after being ramped for five hours at the Flinders Medical Centre.
"A COVID patient in his 60s went into cardiac arrest after being ramped," the AEA tweeted.
"Paramedics and hospital staff attempted to resuscitate the patient, but sadly the patient passed away."
SA Health would not comment on whether it was the same case as the one reported in today's official COVID update.
In a statement, the South Australian Ambulance Service (SAAS) said paramedics arrived within 15 minutes to attend to the patient, confirming there was a delay on the ramp and that the man had suffered a cardiac arrest.
But SAAS said it understood the man had recently recovered from COVID.
"While we arrived very quickly, within 15 minutes, to attend this patient and provided exceptional ongoing clinical care, we understand that the patient outcome was, unfortunately, a sad one," a spokesperson said.
"SAAS offers sincere condolences to the family of the patient."
There are currently 161 people in hospital in SA with the virus and eight people in intensive care, including one on a ventilator.
The jump in daily cases comes amid the spread of the new BA.2 variant, and takes the total number of active cases to 27,136.
SA Health said the latest genome sampling has found about 70 per cent of cases are BA.2.
There have been 240 fatal COVID cases in SA since the start of the pandemic, all but four of them since borders reopened in November.
The 4,594 new cases is an increase of more than 900 on yesterday's figure of 3,686 and comes after Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier and senior epidemiologist Professor Adrian Esterman yesterday predicted daily totals could rise to 8,000 within weeks.
"We are predicting upwards of 8,000 cases over the next couple of weeks," Professor Spurrier said yesterday.
"As we do have more cases in our community, unfortunately the expectation is that we do have an increase in the number of deaths as well."
Premier Peter Malinauskas today said while he accepted there was community "fatigue" around COVID, he said he would continue to push for booster uptake.
"As the case numbers go up, the hospitalisations are not increasing at the same pace, and that is because of the vaccine," Mr Malinauskas said.
"What worries all of us is that, as the vaccine take-up [and take-up] amongst boosters wanes, we could start to see a different outcome.
"I know there's fatigue out in the community, and I get it — people are sick of being told to go and get vaccinated.
Daily totals have tended to peak towards the middle of the working week, which has corresponded with a rise in testing.
"Yesterday, 15,592 people received a PCR test in South Australia, which is a 33.5 per cent increase on the previous 24 hours," SA Health said.
SA Health said almost 70 per cent of the eligible population had so far received booster vaccinations.
COVID management and ambulance ramping were major political issues leading into the recent state election.
Mr Malinauskas today reiterated his pledge to fix ramping.
"Our commitment over the course of four years to reduce ramping down to a level that ambulances start rolling up on time," he said.
"That was my commitment before the election, that's my commitment after the election."
