Intensive care staff at St Vincent’s Hospital looking after a patient with COVID-19 on Tuesday.[Source: SMH/KATE GERAGHTY]

Sydney’s health system has become the first in the country to confront the latest wave of highly transmissible Delta-variant cases.

ne in three people in the state’s hospitals with COVID-19 is in intensive care, as Sydney’s health system becomes the first in the country to confront the latest wave of highly transmissible Delta-variant cases.

“We are seeing a more diverse group of patients this time, with a disproportionate number of younger patients in ICU,” said Dr Paul Preisz, medical director of the emergency department at St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst. “It just seems like nobody is safe.

“Last year we saw older patients with high blood pressure and other existing conditions but this time they are younger, with no medical problems. We are seeing a broader range of ages.”

But despite an influx of patients, Dr Preisz said the system was now better at managing the disease through life-saving treatments including the inexpensive steroid dexamethasone, oxygen management and the antiviral remdesivir.

“We are more experienced this time, hundreds of people are now being monitored at home and there is more data out there on how to manage it. We have a more mature system,” said Dr Preisz.

During the peak of the first wave of COVID-19 in April last year NSW recorded about 250 cases in hospital in a single day, of which 40 were in ICU.

There are currently 65 cases in Sydney’s hospitals, including 21 in ICU with four who are ventilated.

The rise in hospitalisations comes as about 1.3 million people in NSW, almost half the population aged over 50, are yet to receive their first dose of the vaccine.

Dr Preisz said there had been a “dramatic change in hospital management”, with double the number of doctors in their dedicated emergency department red zone, an area blocked off for suspected COVID-19 cases.

A green zone is allocated for all other patients. All patients suspected of having the virus are given rapid diagnostic tests that return results within an hour, he said.

“The numbers are getting higher so we’ve increased staff to the red zone, we have opened up beds on the ward for COVID-19 positive patients and ICU has expanded to take over other spaces so they can manage. Surgery has been cut back.”