Health experts say state and federal authorities are pursuing the wrong strategies as Victoria's COVID hospital admissions have soared almost 80 per cent over the past three weeks.
Victoria on Tuesday recorded 10,627 new cases of the virus, and 16 new deaths.
The number of patients being treated for COVID in the state's hospitals rose from 402 in mid-June to 737 on Tuesday.
"To put a scale on that, Alfred Hospital has about 560 beds so this is more than one whole hospital full of patients with the one condition of COVID," Melbourne University's School of Health Science's Bruce Thompson said.
"We'd assume that they'll increase for another few weeks."
Professor Thompson said the increase in patient numbers was mostly due to the highly infectious BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sub-variants arriving at the same time people returned to the office and mask mandates were dropped.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA)'s vice-president Chris Moy said the situation posed a major threat to the hospital system and the community.
"I have not heard health authorities so worried for quite a period of time behind the scenes," Dr Moy told ABC News Breakfast.
He said the sub-variants were causing more reinfections and more severe disease which, when coupled with an increase in flu cases, was causing blow-outs in emergency department waiting times as well as Ambulance Victoria calling seven code reds in as many months.
Dr Moy said the next two months were a "really high-risk period" for contracting the virus and overloading the hospital system.
"That means you're going to get stuck outside, ramped outside of a hospital, unable to get into an emergency department in a really dire situation," he said.
Australia's death rate among world's highest
Burnet Institute infectious disease expert Brendan Crabb compared Australia with Japan, which he said had a seven-day average death rate of 15, with 40,000 cases a day.
"They are five times Australia's population," he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
"Our death rate is 45 a day and going up and we have about the same number of cases."
Professor Crabb said the state and federal governments' decision to remove all restrictions and rely on vaccinations to protect the vulnerable was the wrong choice.
"We have dug ourselves into a strategic hole," he said.
"Omicron came along and blew the Prime Minister's [then Scott Morrison] four-stage exit plan out of the water."
"What we didn't take account of was the damage that every second person in Australia getting COVID would cause."
Professor Crabb said it was unusual that Victoria rarely heard from the Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, anymore, and he called for a return to more regular public briefings.
"More important is our political leaders standing up and saying what is the advice they're receiving," he said.
"We have our head in the sand with respect to COVID. That's the biggest problem."
"It's the hope we have that it's gone away and of course it hasn't gone away. We're on our fifth sub-variant for the year."
He said some people who had already been infected with COVID twice may be infected multiple times this year.
"It's not sustainable and that strategic shift is the most important thing that we need to do and it comes from the top," Professor Crabb said.
The network of COVID-19 experts, OzSAGE, has also expressed concern about the rise in hospital admissions.
OzSAGE wants access to third doses of a vaccine to be extended to those aged 12 to 15 years, and fourth doses made available to everyone aged 18 and above.
The network of experts is also calling for a renewed effort to improve ventilation and air filtration in buildings, provisions of free PCR and rapid antigen testing, as well as a public health campaign targeting at-risk groups.
A Victorian Health Department spokesperson said the state had anticipated a surge in cases due to the omicron sub-variants, and anticipated a further increase in cases – including re-infections, hospitalisations and deaths in coming weeks.
They said the rise in hospital admissions was in line with similar patterns overseas and in other Australian jurisdictions which have seen a significant rise in the number of patients in recent weeks.
A spokesperson for the department said the rate of BA.4 and BA.5 found in Melbourne and regional Victoria's wastewater catchments continued to rise significantly, with latest data indicating they are now the dominant strains in the community, with levels of BA.5 greater than BA.4.
The Victorian government has changed the isolation exemption for people who've recently contracted COVID-19 from 12 weeks down to four weeks.
It said the move was in response to evidence showing new variants could evade prior immunity gained from infection.
Positive cases are still required to isolate for seven days, but will be allowed to drive a household member to get food, as long as the infected person stays in the car and wears a mask.
The government has also announced a new campaign to encourage eligible people to get their third or fourth doses of vaccine.
No need for lockdowns, just more precautions
While Professor Brendan Crabb blamed errors in government strategy for crippling the health system, disrupting schools and causing travel chaos, he said he was not advocating for a return to lockdowns or restrictive public measures.
He said there were precautions every Victorian could take, including getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.
"Being conscious of the air you breathe and mitigating that as best as possible," he said.
"Cloth masks and even surgical masks don't really cut it with an airborne pathogen.
"There are better quality masks and they can be both talked about and they can be provided for free in chemists or in places where you get tested or in schools."
He said it was also important to continue following testing and isolation protocols
"That is still a rule but we know that that is dropping off," Professor Crab said.
"The really good news is you don't need to make a big impact on transmission to have a big impact on outcome.
"We at the Burnet published recently that just a 20 per cent reduction in transmission could save 2,000 lives in Australia, and that was pre-BA.4."
Authorities have expanded eligibility for anti-viral medication to try to stop people from getting severely ill when they catch COVID.
The drugs are now available to all Australians aged over 70, some people aged over 50 and some Indigenous Australians over 30.
The AMA said anti-virals were key to reducing the chance of ending up in hospital but feared too many people would not access the medication until it was too late.
Dr Moy said doing a PCR test to get a more accurate result than a RAT could help people access anti-virals sooner.
Call for return to financial support
A $750 federal government payment that had been available to people isolating with COVID, and who didn't have access to sick leave, has now ended.
Professor Crabb and Dr Moy both called on the state and federal governments to re-instate financial support for people who need to get tested and who return a positive result.
"They're worried. They get symptoms, they won't get a test because they don't have pandemic leave and because of that what happens then is that they either can't get their anti-viral and they could get sick," Dr Moy said
"Or another situation is they go back to work and they continue spreading it around and accelerating the pandemic."
"There are mixed messaging from politicians who are pushing fourth doses and anti-virals but won't reinstate pandemic payments, cutting telehealths for GPs who would prescribe anti-virals and no mask mandates."
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said the government could not afford to keep the payment in place any longer.
"These are hard decisions, and I encourage people where there are isolation rules still in place at a state level to follow them, but we are rolling out very significant measures to improve our resilience as a community," he said.
The University of Melbourne's Professor Bruce Thompson agreed state and federal politicians needed to take more of a lead.
"I even heard from one of my colleagues who went to the footy the other day and she whacked a mask on and felt uncomfortable so we as a society we really do need to socially adapt where it's quite OK where we see people on the train or at the footy or in the workplace wearing a mask and we don't even blink," he said.
"I don't think we're there yet and this requires leadership from the top."
