An 84-year-old woman has been forced to wait almost 10 hours at an Adelaide hospital as the city keeps elective surgeries on hold amid a capacity crisis.
The woman was pictured lying on a row of seats inside the Lyell McEwin Hospital on Wednesday.
Deputy Opposition Leader John Gardner claimed she had been suffering significant flu symptoms.
“At one stage coughing so uncontrollably that she nearly lost consciousness,” he said.
Health Minister Chris Picton was unable to verify the claim but admitted the wait times were too long.
“We know that our hospitals are busy and that’s why we need additional beds and that’s what we’re delivering,” he said.
Adelaide’s hospitals have been under “code yellow” for eight consecutive days as they remain at capacity.
The internal emergency has resulted in 458 elective surgeries cancelled.
“We’ve continued to have every bed we’ve had available full and on numbers of days we’ve had our intensive care units full or overfull,” SA Health chief Robyn Lawrence said.
To make matters more dire, a wave of COVID-19 and the flu have forced 278 unimmunised health staff to call in sick.
Elective surgeries resumed today in regional hospitals but restrictions will remain in place for the rest of Adelaide until at least Tuesday.
Lawrence assured those who had their elective surgeries cancelled that they won’t lose their spot on the wait list.
Authorities have blamed the city’s health crisis on the federal government after yesterday’s state budget delivered a record $2.5 billion investment into health.
“States around the country are being caught in the middle in this squeeze, of a failure of other service delivery, particularly by the Commonwealth,” Treasurer Stephen Mullighan said.