The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Victoria faculty chair, Dr Mya Cubitt, said on Friday that doctors and nurses in public hospitals had been dreading such a situation because they were still recovering from Victoriaâs second wave in 2020.
At its height, that outbreak saw more than 700 new cases in a single day. There were 768 deaths overall with hundreds of healthcare workers infected.
âWe are in the worst crisis that healthcare has faced in many years,â Cubitt said.
âYou could even say â and Iâd love to speak with [chief health officer Prof] Brett Sutton about this â that the access block and overcrowding of the system is the bigger public health emergency at the moment. Whether we have a Covid outbreak or not, emergency clinicians, and all of the many colleagues that we intersect with in the healthcare system, are under extreme pressure.â