Add Category
WA has reported 3594 COVID cases, an increase of more than 25 per cent on the previous day, as the State approaches the peak of its Omicron wave.
There were 67 West Australians in hospital with COVID on Wednesday, up from 48 people on Tuesday and 36 on Monday.
Crucially, none of the patients were being treated in intensive care despite WA’s active caseload reaching 15,570. There were also no deaths linked to the virus in the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday night.
There were 17,528 PCR tests, of which 1758 returned positive results. The remaining 1836 cases were self-reported positive rapid antigen tests.
Every region in WA recorded new infections overnight, with the vast majority again located in metropolitan Perth (3155 cases).
That was followed by the South West (92 new cases), Wheatbelt (52), Pilbara (50), Goldfields (32), Mid West (27), Great Southern (12) and Kimberley (eight). The remaining 163 cases have yet to be assigned a region.
The death toll during the current Omicron wave remains at three after a woman in her 40s with underlying health conditions died with the virus over the weekend.
WA reported 2847 cases on Tuesday, following on from 2365 (Monday), 2270 (Sunday), 2289 (Saturday), 2137 (Friday), 2423 (Thursday) and 1770 (Wednesday).
The rise is in-line with WA Health modelling of the Omicron variant, which forecast 5450 cases by March 13 and 9700 cases at the end of this month.
Meanwhile, the number of people hospitalised with COVID so far this year is tracking at about half the rate suggested by the modelling.
The West revealed a total of 152 people have been hospitalised with COVID since the start of 2022 from more than 25,000 reported infections - or about 0.6 per cent of all known cases.
Modelling compiled by WA Health – which underpins the restrictions currently in place across the State – forecast 463,932 people would be infected with Omicron in the space of 180 days.
During that period it was anticipated 5685 people would require a hospital bed, or about 1.2 per cent of all infections.
That is exactly double what has been observed to date, although the modelling also suggests a lag of around six days between symptom onset and hospital admission.
A WA Health spokesman said the number of hospitalisations during the Omicron wave was “broadly consistent with outcomes simulated by the model”, but insisted it was “not developed or released as a forecasting tool and should not be used as such”.