NSW and Victoria have been hit with an uptick in Covid hospitalisations.
Victoria notched up another 6694 cases in the past 24 hours on Sunday while 16,813 were recorded in NSW.
There were four virus deaths in NSW and none in Victoria.
Both states are battling to keep their Covid hospitalisations low with 215 patients receiving care in Victoria in Sunday’s figures and 1124 in NSW.
It is another rise from the day before, when there were 1090 in hospital with Covid in NSW, which was up from the previous day of 1060.
In Victoria there was 210 Covid hospital patients reported on Saturday, which was up from 199 the day prior.
There are now 21 active cases in Victorian intensive care units, with six of these needing ventilation.
In NSW, 33 people with Covid are in the state’s ICUs.
The current figures are an increase on both states’ recent hospitalisation troughs — with Victoria’s bottoming out at 175 in early March.
NSW lowest recent figure was 965 on March 13.
More than 94 per cent of eligible Victorians are double vaccinated and the state has 49,921 active cases.
A total of 16,965 PCR tests were taken on Wednesday and 9,877 vaccines were administered at state hubs.
More than 94.5 per cent of the population in NSW is double vaccinated.
The uptick comes after a warning the BA.2 subvariant — or Son of Omicron — is continuing to sweep across the country.
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said the variant is “slowly but gradually asserting itself” to become the state’s dominant strain.
“We do have advice that it is more infectious but I don’t have specific advice as to the rate of that, but I’ve got no reason to disbelieve the NSW evidencexjmtzyw,” he said.
“It aligns with international evidence and we would expect that over time the sub BA.2 variant will become the dominant variant.”
