Fears new sub-variants will grind NSW to halt again

Remember the bad old days of January.

That's the grim warning from New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard, as he predicted the state is now about to enter a long, potentially deadly, COVID-19 winter.

With BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of Omicron on the rise, Hazzard foreshadowed a return to mass absenteeism in Sydney's hospitals and workplaces, which would again cripple critical supply lines of food and other products.

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"The numbers are going up quite dramatically," he said.

"You might remember back in January it was a pretty ugly month.

"We had more than 6000 health staff furloughed or not at work, we had thousands of people in shops and distribution centres not able to come to work.

"We're very worried that these two variants are going to do the same thing."

Speaking on Today, Hazzard even went as far as to urge Queenslanders and Victorians, as well as those in his own jurisdiction, to make sure their boosters were up to date.

"It won't necessarily stop you getting the virus," he said.

"But it will be making it much less likely that you get very ill or die."

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Health officials are expecting case numbers and hospitalisations to peak in late July and early August and to match the spiralling caseload in January.

During the worst of the Omicron wave, six months ago, the state recorded several days of cases which went north of 30,000.

Today the state reported 13,775 positive cases, up from Tuesday's figure of 10,504.

The actual number of coronavirus cases will be far higher, because of a reliance on RATs and self-reporting.

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