People who test positive for COVID are now free to leave their homes after 10 days regardless of whether they are cleared by NSW Health.
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Health Minister Brad Hazzard said on Sunday that the thousands of COVID-positive people in isolation across the state might never hear from NSW Health staff as the health system came under increasing strain.
Some patients would receive a text from NSW Health 10 days after being tested "but if you don't and you are symptom-free, you are entitled to leave your home".
"You don't need to be waiting for someone to give you a free pass or a pass out of your house," Mr Hazzard said.
"We know that you are very unlikely at that point to be infectious.
"That again will take the pressure off everybody.
"This is a different way of dealing with it. It's no longer the delta. It's no longer the earlier variants.
"It's a variant that we know is very transmissable but not causing the same level of grief at this stage on the basis of international evidence and evidence available in Australia."
The Hunter reported 510 new cases on Sunday as people were turned away from overrun testing stations.
A long queue formed at the Honeysuckle Drive testing site before it opened at 8am, but some people reported being turned away before 10.30am as the clinic was due to close at midday.
The Adamstown velodrome testing station also reached capacity.
The University of Newcastle test site closed at 11am.
The new Hunter cases included 188 in Lake Macquarie, 89 in Newcastle, 40 in Cessnock, 40 in Maitland and 24 in Port Stephens.
Sixteen patients are receiving care in Hunter New England Health hospitals, up from 12 the day before, and two are in intensive care.
The HNEH district recorded 627 new cases on Saturday, but the centre of the omicron outbreak has shifted to Sydney.
NSW recorded 6394 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Christmas Day and the state's hospitals are now treating 458 COVID patients.
The hospital numbers have doubled in a week, and intensive care patients have increased from 28 to 52.
Mr Hazzard and Premier Dominic Perrottet said at a media conference on Sunday that people should avoid testing sites unless they had symptoms or had been directed to get tested and isolate as a close contact.
Mr Hazzard said wait times for test results had blown out to three or four days in many cases and symptom-free people should take at-home rapid tests instead before they "visit aunt Mabel".
He said "we're all going to get omicron" but local and international evidence pointed to the variant causing relatively mild disease.
More than 2000 hospital staff had been "furloughed" due to COVID isolation requirements, and he said the government was considering cutting isolation periods for health workers from 10 days to seven if they were close contacts.
He noted that hospital staff wore fitted, higher-quality masks at work.
Rapid antigen tests have been in short supply in many parts of the state, including Newcastle, but Mr Perrottet reiterated that the government was working on a plan to distribute them for free in the new year.
He said at-home testing would become the "new norm" in 2022.
The Premier also said the "inconveniences" of isolation would continue "to ensure that we keep our state safe".
He expected testing delays to ease slightly in the coming days but said the test requirements for interstate travel would continue to burden pathology labs into the new year.
On Friday, the federal government cut the interval between vaccine second doses and booster shots from five to four months from January 4.
The other Hunter local government areas to record new infections on Sunday included Upper Hunter (16), Singleton (10), Muswellbrook (4) and Dungog (3).
MidCoast LGA, which includes part of the Hunter, recorded 14.
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