Around two-thirds of COVID patients in Orange have been discharged from care within the past two weeks.
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Up to September 17, 19 people who had contracted the virus were no longer receiving help from the Western NSW Local Health District team as part of its care in the community program. Although discharged cases are not a direct indicator of recovered cases, this is an accurate statement in the majority of instances.
Orange had seen the fourth largest number of people discharged from this program in the past 14 days, with Bathurst (21), Bourke (56) and Dubbo (303) with more. Over that same time frame, Blayney has seen two discharged with four still in care, while Cabonne has seen one discharged and two still in care.
In Western NSW as a whole, 445 people have been discharged in the past two weeks, while 340 are still receiving care in the program.
Reasons for discharge also include, but are not limited to, patients being relocated for treatment or accommodation in other LHDs, patients being hospitalised and death.
And while the high number of discharged patients was seen as a positive by Western NSW LHD chief executive Scott McLachlan, there was a concerning figure that also emerged.
As of September 17, there were 18 patients in hospital, four in intensive care and three of those ventilated. Of those hospitalised, nine were in Dubbo, six in Bathurst, two in Orange and one in Brewarrina.
Mr McLachlan said that 80 per cent of those patients were not fully vaccinated.
"There are two people in their 20s and two people in their 30s. They're not in intensive care but they're crook enough to be in hospital," he said.
"Of the four in intensive care, two are in their 40s and two in their 60s. With two people in their 20s in hospital, it's a real signal to all of us that picking up COVID and spreading it to others is a really serious risk to your health and health of people around you."
Up to 8pm on Saturday, there had been eight new COVID cases in Western NSW.
Dubbo saw four cases, Wellington had two and there were another two in Walgett. None were recorded in Orange.
This brings the total cases in the LHD during this recent outbreak to 1,064.
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