Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

To add to the Prime Minister's answer, one of the things that we prepared for right from the outset was the strengthening of the hospital system across the country. We increased the ventilator capacity to 7½ thousand. In New South Wales that's approximately 2,000. At this point in time, New South Wales has 44 patients, I understand, on ventilation. I'd need to check whether that number has changed in the update today. In particular, as the Prime Minister said, probably the most fundamental thing, apart from building the ventilator capacity, providing surge workforce capacity, bringing workforce back in and adding workforce training, was creating the private hospitals guarantee. That guarantee was to make sure that we had a national partnership where those workers were available to assist the public health system. That's exactly what's happening now. As the Prime Minister said: 19 hospitals, 300 workers already provided, many more available.

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