Question: Do Higher Case Numbers And Hospitalisation Rates Predict The Next Wave?

Covid Tracker: May 5

Richard Borge

Despite rhetoric from the federal election campaign trail citing the pandemic is over, cases numbers and hospitalisations tell a different story.

But whether statistics still represent the severity of the disease, or a more complex picture, seems up for debate.

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Professor Adrian Esterman, an epidemiologist at the University of South Australia said that the recent spike in cases, along with new Omicron sub-variants was a clear indicator that Covid is still a threat.

“Increasing case numbers will inevitably result in increasing hospitalisations and more people with long-Covid. This is real and happening now,”

However, alternative expert opinions suggest that since February, the increasing numbers of patients arriving at hospital with, rather than for, Covid indicates that the severity of the virus is changing.

“There’s much more of a mix of patients, without the huge surges of acute Covid we had in 2020-21,” said Professor Christine Jenkins, head of the Respiratory Group at The George Institute for Global Health.

“This is a significant shift and is why many hospitals are going back to a more general ward approach, with fewer dedicated Covid-19 wards. This approach to bed management is taking some pressure off the emergency departments".
- Professor Jenkins

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While the reporting of Australia's Covid death toll is only becoming more complex since January's surge, according to infectious disease expert Allen Cheng.

Professor Cheng said there are more complex patients attended hospitals, with mixed diagnosis, making reporting of Covid fatalities more difficult.

“There are three groups in the mix: those brought in after an accident who happen to test positive; those who come in with severe Covid-19 (not many and often unvaccinated); and the group in the middle with some other medical problem that has been destabilised by Covid-19,”

“A patient in ICU whose heart failure was exacerbated by Covid-19 and who died would likely be counted as a Covid-19 death,” he said, which makes reporting troublesome.

Therefore, it stands to reason that if Australia continues to report more cases of the BA.4 and BA.5 strain, we are also more likely to experience greater numbers of incidental Covid.

Meanwhile, Covid cases and hospitalisations across Australia and New Zealand look like this:

Western Australia