One in 12 public hospital beds across Australia are filled by a COVID-19 patient despite fewer people ending up in intensive care than during previous waves of the virus.

Hospitals nationwide are "heaving" under the coronavirus caseload, with more than 5000 beds occupied by positive patients, Health Minister Mark Butler says.

"We're numbering about 330,000 cases on a seven-day average per week at the moment, but we know from sampling from the positivity rates that we're getting for PCR tests, that the real number is probably at least twice that," he told the Australian Medical Association national conference on Saturday.

"It is an extraordinary numbers of infections with this highly infectious new (Omicron) subvariant."

Mr Butler said the one upside of the current Omicron wave was that ICU rates were well below where they were in January, while the number of flu cases was also declining sharply.

But he added that the take up of third vaccine doses had "stalled to quite an alarming extent", with around five million people yet to receive a booster after their two initial shots.

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