Over 20 Sydney COVID-19 testing sites temporarily shut as state records 23,131 cases

Victoria cases surge to 14,020 with two deaths

Health care workers administer COVID-19 PCR tests at the St Vincent’s Drive-through Clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Photo: AAP/Bianca De Marchi

4 January 2022 10:36am

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NSW has recorded 20,794 cases of COVID-19 and four deaths while more than 20 COVID-19 testing centres across the city have been temporarily shut due to having reached capacity.

Health care providers struggle to meet demand as vehicles line up for up to eight hours with the risk of not even making the cut off.

Currently, there are 1204 people in hospital and 95 in ICU. Of those 25 are on ventilators.

Unfortunately, 21 per cent of those tested for the virus are now returning positive results.

Victoria on the other hands has recorded 14,020 COVID-19 cases and two deaths, a big spike from the previous 24 hours.

There are 516 people hospitalised in the state, of whom 56 in intensive care with 24 requiring a ventilator.

The health department said a further 52 people were in ICU whose infections were no longer considered active.

In Victoria, about one in four people testing with PCRs are infected; at the same time 40 overwhelmed testing sites have had to shut down.

There's currently 40 testing sites in Victoria that are closed because they've reached capacity. Others are just plain old closed, and some are closing as early as 10am or 11am.https://t.co/yVOC9edcrM

— Karen Sweeney (@karenlsweeney) January 3, 2022

Meanwhile, ACT recorded 926 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm yesterday. There are currently, 13 patients in ACT hospitals as at 8pm yesterday, one in intensive care and one ventilated.

In the last 24 hours, 2088 tests were processed in Tasmania with a positive rate of 33.6 per cent. Three people are hospitalised out of 702 new cases of COVID-19.

Extraordinary pics of #Melbourne coming in this morning from the news chopper. Testing queues and vaccination queues absolutely everywhere @7NewsMelbourne #Omicron pic.twitter.com/PHG6X16n3s

— Christie Cooper (@ChristieCooper7) January 3, 2022

Finally, while the country experiences a huge testing crisis, a new company is helping people find rapid antigen tests (RATs). Website ‘Find a RAT’ launched on Monday by software developer Matt Hayward, who runs the Melbourne software agency Pipelabs.