The Bulli Hospital Urgent Care Centre will now remain closed until mid-February as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the Illawarra.
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The Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District reported 1448 new COVID cases in the 24 hours to Monday night, including 896 from Wollongong, 289 from Shellharbour, 58 from Kiama, and 205 from Shoalhaven.
The number of COVID hospital patients in the district has jumped from 66 to 74.
Read more: Illawarra COVID testing sites close again
The Urgent Care Centre at Bulli Hospital closed before Christmas so staff could be redeployed to keep emergency departments running at fully capacity over the holiday period.
The decision to extend this closure until next month has been made so these staff can continue supporting emergency departments.
"There will be no impact on inpatient services at Bulli Hospital, and medical care for inpatients will continue as usual," the district said.
"The district's priority is to ensure that we are able to run our four emergency departments at full capacity during this critical time."
Shoalhaven Hospital's sub-acute mental health unit will also remain a special health accommodation facility for this same period of time.
Non-urgent elective surgery has already been suspended until February.
Hospitalisations in the Illawarra Shoalhaven have increased 12-fold since late November, with six COVID patients reported on November 29.
As of Monday, January 10, there were 6797 recorded cases of COVID that were active, 2397 in Shellharbour, 777 in Kiama, and 1913 in Shoalhaven.
Meanwhile, NSW has recorded 25,780 new COVID cases.
NSW Health notes that as more people use rapid antigen tests instead of PCR tests, the recorded number of infections will not reflect the true number of people who have the virus.
The NSW government plans to introduce a system through which residents can report positive RAT results through Service NSW this week.
It wants to make the reporting of positive RAT results mandatory.
However, testing sites have remained busy in the Illawarra with rapid antigen tests in short supply.
There were 71,325 PCR tests reported to 8pm Monday, compared with the previous day's total of 84,333.
There are 2186 people in hospital across NSW, which includes 170 patients in intensive care - of whom 51 are on ventilators.
NSW Health has reported the deaths of another 11 people, aged from their 70s to their 90s.
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