The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District (ISLHD) hit 99 on Thursday morning, up four cases in 24 hours.
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Of these cases, 10 patients are being cared for in Wollongong Hospital, one patient in Shellharbour Hospital and two patients in Shoalhaven Hospital.
Across the state, an additional 116 cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in the 24 hours to 8pm on Wednesday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in NSW to 2298.
ISLHD Executive Director Medical Services Dr Peter Jansen said with the spread of COVID-19 regularly changing, the district was ensuring local hospitals were well equipped and ready to deal with all levels of severity.
"We had a bit of a jump up initially but now it's quite stable with the cases we're getting each day," he said. "We haven't had a lot of serious cases so that's quite reassuring."
Dr Jansen said those with milder illness were recovering at home, in isolation, with daily checks. Those who were more seriously affected were being hospitalised until they recovered.
"A lot of people, particularly younger people, will have a very mild illness - some have no symptoms at all," he said.
"People that are more vulnerable, have underlying conditions or are older, can be much more severe and take a longer time to get better.
"It's worse than the seasonal flu and we would keep them in hospital until they're well enough to go home."
Joanna Harris, the nurse manager of the district's infection prevention and control service, said everyone had a part to play in prevention.
"COVID-19 is a virus infection which is a variety of a strain of virus called coronavirus that we haven't seen before - it's a new one for us," she said.
"The problem is that even though it's a strain of quite a common virus, because it's new the population hasn't met it before.
"We're all naive to it and that means there isn't any herd immunity."
Ms Harris said the fact there was no vaccination for COVID-19 meant people had to take other preventative measures.
"Vaccination is what provides us nowadays with herd immunity," she said.
"With other infections (without a vaccine) the herd immunity develops over time because the population gets the infection then develops the immunity as more and more people get it.
"Unfortunately with COVID-19 we don't have herd immunity so we have to base prevention on straightforward things - behavioural things."
These included proper hand hygiene and cough etiquette, as well as following strict social distancing measures.
"There are natural ways infection can enter our bodies - with COVID the main ways are through the mouth, nose and eyes," Ms Harris said.
"People touch surfaces that others have touched, and then touch their faces - that's how it spreads.
"We need to break that chain of infection through good hand hygiene and following the (social isolation) rules we should all be familiar with.
"That's the way to stop this infection spreading so quickly the way it has in Italy, where it spread so fast the health system could not keep up.
"Inevitably infection will happen, but we want it to happen more slowly."
That way, herd immunity could develop - and a vaccine perfected.
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