COVID-19 Response

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (14:34): Supplementary: is it actually the fact that the higher death rate in South Australia compared to other states is because the government failed to properly prepare the hospital system before opening the borders?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:34): I would be interested to know the source of the honourable member's data. I don't recall having seen data from an official source that made those sorts of comparisons. I would rather not start providing commentary on data that I can't judge as to whether it's from a reliable source.

On the point about availability of beds, the Treasurer, through the 2021-22 budget, started the ramping up of additional bed capacity. It was only those investments from the middle of last year right through to the end of last year that meant that, when we were experiencing the Omicron wave at its height in January, we had 500 beds that could be dedicated to the COVID response. My understanding is that we had, at the current peak, 300 beds, so there was certainly more capacity during the Omicron wave in January to deploy more hospital beds than were being deployed.

The suggestion that we weren't prepared—we have been preparing for months for this. The fact that we had more capacity than was needed in that January wave validates that.