NSW's daily Covid-19 case tally has almost doubled in a day, with 11,201 new infections and three deaths recorded.
Enormous queues at testing sites and delays for Covid-19 results continue to grip the Australian state. Photo: AFP or licensors
Hospitalisations have risen to 625, up from 557 in the previous reporting period, and there are now 61 patients in intensive care.
The latest figures were taken from more than 157,758 tests and it is the highest number of daily Covid-19 cases recorded in any Australian jurisdiction.
Yesterday, the state recorded 6,062 new cases from 93,581 swabs.
Enormous queues at testing sites and delays for Covid-19 results continue to grip the state, with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet promising yesterday to provide some "immediate" relief.
Many testing sites across NSW continue to operate with reduced hours over the holiday period or have not reopened.
The NSW government over the past week has blamed the testing chaos on pathology staff being exhausted, people getting swabbed unnecessarily and the Queensland government.
It said people seeking a PCR test as a condition of interstate travel accounted for a third of tests being conducted.
The Queensland government announced this morning it would scrap requirements for interstate travellers from Covid-19 hotspots to produce a negative PCR test before arriving in the state, from 1 January.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said rapid antigen tests could be used to satisfy border pass requirements from Saturday, instead of the nasal PCR test swabs that currently have to be collected by pathology clinics in the 72 hours before a traveller enters Queensland.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said yesterday he had hoped Ms Palaszczuk would axe PCR requirements sooner, saying if she could do it on New Year's Day she could do it immediately.
Perrottet, in a tense interview yesterday, had doubled down on his decision to relax restrictions on 15 December despite the emergence of the Omicron strain just days earlier.
As well as scrapping most indoor masks mandates and QR check-ins - which he reinstated just days ago - the government dropped almost all restrictions for the unvaccinated.
NSW Health said most of the 625 people currently in hospital had not received two doses of the vaccine.
Perrottet said it was a "good decision" and he stood by it, but was "incredibly sorry" for the impact it had had on vulnerable people enduring long testing queues.
He confirmed the state government had purchased 20 million rapid antigen tests and would be buying more. It was unclear when these kits would be distributed.
Today's deaths included two women, one in her 70s and one in her 90s, who died at the Warabrook Aged Care facility in Newcastle where they acquired their infections.
Both were fully vaccinated, with one having had three doses, and both had underlying health conditions.
A man in his 80s from Sydney's Inner West died at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. He had received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine and had underlying health conditions.
- ABC