Australia's top health bureaucrat has denied elective surgeries and other care will be delayed when coronavirus cases rise under a national reopening plan.
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National cabinet will on Friday receive new advice about potential pressure on hospitals when restrictions ease after high vaccination coverage is achieved.
Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said leaders should go back to the drawing board if the plan was to stop surgeries and other care to deal with high cases.
"Stopping surgery and other care was necessary in 2020 in a crisis," he said on Friday.
"But there is no excuse for lazy planning now. If we can't open up without decimating ordinary health care maybe we need more than 80 per cent of our population vaccinated?"
Dr Khorshid said the health system needed to provide normal care to everyone or lives would be lost for years to come.
Health Department boss Brendan Murphy said the AMA president was wrong because low-level transmission would be dealt with in public hospitals.
"It is not a plan that is dependent on stopping elective surgeries and paralysing the private hospital system. That is not true," he told a Senate committee.
"They are there as a valuable backstop if we need them but all the modelling is done to move into living with COVID in a vaccinated population with low-level activity.
"Any suggestion to the contrary is false."
While leaders have an eye on the future, the immediate crisis has deepened with Australia smashing its daily case record.
There were more than 1630 new infections reported on Friday including 1431 in NSW and 208 in Victoria.
The national death toll rose to 1032 after 12 more deaths in NSW and one in Victoria.
Professor Murphy said private hospitals would be used only during major outbreaks like Sydney's current situation.
There are more than 1000 coronavirus patients in Australia's hospitals with 184 in intensive care.
NSW - where hospitalisations are expected to peak mid-next month - has 160 people in ICU, while there are 20 in Victoria and four in the ACT.
A reopening agreement between federal and state governments to gradually ease restrictions at 70 and 80 per cent of people aged 16 and above vaccine coverage continues to fracture.
Prof Murphy believes the system can cope after speaking to counterparts in NSW and Victoria.
"Both feel very confident they have the capacity to meet the demand but it is obviously putting some pressure on the New South Wales health system in particular," he said.
More than 36 per cent of the over-16 population is fully vaccinated while 60.53 per cent have received a single dose.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is in talks with Prime Minister Scott Morrison about boosting her state's vaccine allocation.
"The worst number of cases is likely to occur in the next fortnight," she told reporters.
"Because after that time the number of vaccinations we've put into the community, especially in those local government areas of concern, will start having effect."
Australian Associated Press
