Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced 10,212 new Covid infections and 13 deaths in the state as the chief health officer said the Omicron peak may have been reached on the Gold Coast.
All of the deaths were people over 70 years of age, including four people in their 70s, seven in their 80s and two people in their 90s.
Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said the Gold Coast, where the major hospital now had nine wards devoted to Coid-19 patients, may be close or even passed the peak of the current outbreak.
'Gold Coast numbers have declined slightly every day for the past four days, in would appear GC is close to or past the current peak,' Dr Gerrard said.
Dr Gerrard said 878 people were in Queensland public hospitals with Covid, a slight rise on yesterday's figure of 863.
'The number of people in hospital appears to be significantly lower than we had expected at this stage,' Dr Gerrard said.
'This we believe has to do with people's changing behaviour in avoiding getting infection.
'We won't know for another week or so when we hit the general peak for Queensland and particularly for south-east Queensland - exactly how high that peak of hospitalisations would be.
'But we were certainly anticipating, certainly, several thousand people in hospital.'
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced 10,212 new Covid infections and 13 deaths in the state
Yesterday he said falls in hospitalisations over consecutive days would be a signal the current Omicron outbreak has reached its peak.
'I’m thinking two, three or four days – that’s the sort of number we should be looking for,' he said on Sunday.
'In reality, we’re not going to be able to tell when we reach the peak until it has passed.
'The real proof will be when the numbers of patients start to fall and so that will be a number of days after the actual true peak...'
Dr Gerrard said the state's Covid hospitalisations and deaths were getting harder to accurately record as authorities revealed that private hospital virus patients haven't been included in its figures.
Another 10 people died and 11,947 new cases were recorded on Sunday, with the number of active cases hitting 85,112.
There were 863 patients being treated for Covid in Queensland public
