The number of people ending up in Queensland hospitals with COVID-19 is worse during this third wave than it was when Omicron swept the state earlier this year.
Hospital admissions have hit an average daily high of 886, higher than the previous record average high of 878.
But the number of people ending up in ICU is a lot lower this time around with an average of around 16 a day.
The average number of hospitalisations is expected to rise as more people contract the virus during this wave.
There are currently 983 people in hospital with COVID, beating the previous record of 928 in January.
In the past 24 hours, 9,992 new COVID cases have been recorded in Queensland, along with 18 deaths.
It comes as Health Minister Yvette D’ath conceded that modelling did not predict the extent of this wave and that they aren’t sure exactly how bad it could get.
“We thought, and the advice that we were getting and the modelling we saw at the start of the year is, you would expect each wave, we’d keep getting waves for months and years but they would slowly reduce and our immunity would build,” Ms D’ath said.
“But with these new variants, we’re not seeing that. We’re now seeing higher waves than we did before.”
Experts are not expecting the peak of this wave to be reached until late this month or early next month.
AMA Queensland President Maria Boulton says not knowing what will happen has made it tough for health staff to prepare.
“I think it’s difficult to predict. This is a new virus, I think we should have all planned for the worst,” Dr Boulton told Seven.
“We didn’t know what the virus was going to do and certainly, now we know that omicron has mutated into a much more infectious virus which is why everyone has it at the moment.”
