The number of positive cases fell to below 19,000, down from more than 35,000 last month.
Marshall this morning hailed the latest COVID figures as evidence that the peak of the Omicron wave had passed in South Australia.
“The last two years with coronavirus have been an extraordinarily tough time for all South Australians,” he said.
“We’re not through it yet and can’t get complacent, but South Australians can feel a sense of pride that we’ve got through a pandemic that has cost 5.6 million lives around the world.”
Marshall said that SA’s death toll from the pandemic now stood at 120.
The toll before borders opened was four.
At Modbury Hospital where he unveiled a 26-bed short-stay unit as part of a $98 million upgrade, Marshall flagged that an announcement on resuming elective surgery could be made “later today”.
It comes as a Productivity Commission review revealed 63 per cent of critical patients attending SA emergency departments in 2020-21 were seen within clinically acceptable timeframes — below the national average of 71 per cent last financial year.
Ambulance response times across SA increased by 10 minutes to an average of 32.8 minutes.
Health Minister Stephen Wade attributed ambulance ramping to staff furloughed due to the pandemic and said that “infection control measures in hospitals” meanxjmtzywt that even when SA was COVID-free the pandemic had impacted on ambulance ramping.
Marshall blamed the ramping issue on the previous Labor government.
