Australians admitted to hospitals from COVID-19 neared record levels. Authorities urged businesses to let staff work from home and recommended people wear masks indoors and get booster shots urgently amid a major outbreak, Reuters reported. Australia is in the grip of a third Omicron wave driven by the highly transmissible new sub variants, BA.4 and BA.5, with more than 300,000 cases recorded over the past seven days. Authorities flagged the actual numbers could be double. Tuesday"s 50,000 cases was the highest in two months. "We need to do some things differently at least for a short period of time," Australia"s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly told ABC Radio on Wednesday, as he predicted the number of people ending up in hospitals will soon hit an all-time high. About 5,300 Australians are currently in hospital with COVID-19, not far off the record 5,390 recorded in January during the BA.1 outbreak, official data showed. Numbers in the states of Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia are already at their highest since the pandemic began. Australia reinstated support payments for casual workers who have to quarantine due to COVID-19 after more workers began calling in sick. Several frontline health workers are also sick or in isolation, further straining the health system. — Agencies