South Australia's emergency departments are in crisis, with staggering wait times on the first day of winter as respiratory illnesses including COVID-19 sweep the state. / (min cost $ 0 ) or signup to continue reading A system-wide 'code yellow' was declared for the state's public hospitals, meaning some elective surgeries will be cancelled for up to a week. SA Health chief executive Robyn Lawrence said the pressure on the system was the worst she'd ever seen, with COVID, pneumonia, heart failures and other conditions particularly affecting older people crippling emergency departments.
On Friday, there were 200 more people in SA's hospitals than at the same time last year, which Dr Lawrence labelled a "significant uplift". And things remained just as bleak on Saturday morning, with every public emergency department classed as 'busy' or 'very busy' with wait times as long as 4.5 hours for non-urgent cases.
Dr Lawrence addressed criticism that cancelling some elective surgeries, such as colonoscopies and endoscopies, might have little impact easing the burden on emergency departments. "There is some flexibility for sites around day cases, however I really want to reinforce we have numbers of staff across our system, which impacts doctors, nurses, allied health, admin staff," she told reporters. "We need to be ensuring we're able to allocate our staff to the patients who need that care most critically, and therefore there may be impacts in day cases as well.
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