A decision to treat COVID-positive patients at Newmarch House rather than in hospital will be a key focus of an inquest into a deadly outbreak that ripped through the Sydney aged care home.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus spread through the Anglicare-run Newmarch in April and May 2020. In total, 37 out of 97 residents tested positive, with 19 dying over that period. A further 34 staff members also caught the disease.

Giving opening remarks on the inquest's first day on Monday, counsel assisting Simon Buchen SC said the main focus would be the "Hospital in the Home" program implemented by Newmarch in which sick residents were treated onsite rather than being sent to nearby hospitals.

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"The inquest will focus on the decision or decisions to care for unwell residents within the home rather than pursuing other options such as transfer to hospital for care and treatment," he told Lidcombe Coroners Court.

Newmarch is a 102-bed facility which was opened in 2012 in the western suburb of Kingswood.

Mr Buchen said Newmarch had other problems with staffing, communication with families and management of the home, which also negatively impacted the care of residents during the outbreak.

While Anglicare did make preparations for what would occur at its 23 aged care homes in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak by early March 2020, these preparations were inadequate, the coroner heard.

"Those preparations were insufficient for an outbreak of the scale of the one that occurred at Newmarch House," Buchen said.

Newmarch was not the first aged care outbreak during the pandemic, Deputy State Coroner Derek Lee was told. On March 3, 2020 BaptistCare's Dorothy Henderson Lodge was also hit with the virus.

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With that facility transferring COVID-positive patients to hospital, 17 out of 76 residents were infected and only six died.

"This represents a substantially lower infection rate and fatality rate than occurred at Newmarch," Mr Buchen said.

In detailing the lives and experiences of the 19 people who lost died during the 2020 Newmarch outbreak, a common theme in Mr Buchen's submissions was that family members mostly did not have an issue with the care offered at the home prior to the arrival of COVID-19, describing staff as dedicated, conscientious, caring and kind.

However, issues popped up during the outbreak, including residents still being able to socialise in the common areas of the home despite lockdown orders, doctors not wearing personal protective equipment and failures to deliver meals to residents' rooms.

There have been six past reviews conducted into the Newmarch outbreak since June 2020, including a hearing held during the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Shine Lawyers is also investigating a class action against Anglicare on behalf of family members of those who passed away because of alleged mismanagement at Newmarch.

The inquest continues.

Retail giants Bunnings and Kmart have both paused the use of facial recognition technology amid an ongoing investigation from the national privacy watchdog.

Consumer advocacy group Choice referred Bunnings, Kmart and the Good Guys to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) for potential breaches of the Privacy Act in June, following an investigation that revealed the retailers were using the controversial technology, which records customers' faceprints, in store.

The Good Guys announced two weeks after that it would be put its facial recognition trial on hold, and today Bunnings and Kmart both confirmed they would pause their use of the technology while the OAIC investigation is ongoing.

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"We've confirmed to the OAIC that the technology is temporarily switched off in our stores and given an investigation is underway we won't be using it for the time being," Bunnings managing director Mike Schneider told 9News.

The company had already temporarily switched the technology in its stores as it moves to a new system.

Schneider accused Choice of mischaracterising the Bunnings' use of facial recognition, saying the technology is used to prevent criminal activity.

"When we have customers berate our team, pull weapons, spit, or throw punches, we ban them from our stores. But a ban isn't effective if it's hard to enforce," he said.

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"Facial recognition gives us a chance to identify when a banned person enters a store so we can support our team to handle the situation before it escalates.

"For absolute clarity, an individual's image is only retained by the system if they are already enrolled in the database of individuals who are banned or associated with crime in our stores.

"We don't use it for marketing or customer behaviour tracking, and we certainly don't use it to identify regular customers who enter our stores as Choice has suggested.

"We're extremely disappointed that Choice has chosen to mischaracterise the issue, especially given the extensive explanations we have provided to them."

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Kmart also said it only uses the technology in relation to crime in its stores.

"We believe our use of facial recognition technology for the limited purpose of preventing criminal activity such as refund fraud is appropriate and its use is subject to strict controls," a Kmart spokesperson told 9News.

"We do not use this technology to track customer behaviour or for marketing purposes.

"We have temporarily stopped the use of this technology in our small number of trial stores given the commencement of the OAIC investigation."

A bed shortage across Victorian hospitals is seeing intensive care patients sent straight home instead of being transferred to general wards.

Western Health ICU Director Professor Craig French confirmed there had been instances at the Footscray and Sunshine hospitals in recent weeks.

He stressed, however, it was rare and said patients were only being sent home if it was safe.

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"Patients can even wait a few days before they're discharged from intensive care and by that time they're actually ready to go home," French said.

"No one is being discharged early or anything like that but it is a reflection of the overall strain the health system is under at this time."

French said when no beds were available, he had also been forced to keep patients in intensive care.

A combination of COVID-19 hospitalisation rising and healthcare workers isolating due to the virus has created stress in hospitals across the state.

Last night, the Royal Children's Hospital warned of six-hour waits due to demand.

"It's definitely daunting to think about what's ahead but my experience as a student nurse has prepared me well," student nurse Alana Hrehorsen said.

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It comes a day after the state government announced thousands of nursing and midwifery students would soon be deployed to hospitals across Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Almost 30 hospitals will benefit from the program, some include; Grampians Health Ballarat, Austin Health, Royal Children's Hospital and Bendigo Health.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the announcement was a "significant boost" to support all healthcare workers.

Myanmar's government announced on Monday it had carried out its first executions in nearly 50 years, hanging a former National League for Democracy lawmaker, a democracy activist and two men accused of violence after the country's takeover by the military last year.

The executions, detailed in the state-run Mirror Daily newspaper, were carried out despite worldwide pleas for clemency for the four political prisoners, including from United Nations experts and Cambodia, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The four were executed "in accordance with legal procedures" for directing and organising "violent and inhuman accomplice acts of terrorist killings," the newspaper reported.

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It did not say when the executions were carried out.

The military government issued a brief statement confirming the report while the prison where the men had been held and the prison department refused comment.

Aung Myo Min, human rights minister for the National Unity Government, a shadow civilian administration established outside Myanmar after the military seized power in February 2021, rejected the allegations the men were involved in violence.

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"Punishing them with death is a way to rule the public through fear," he told The Associated Press.

Among those executed was Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former lawmaker from ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party, also known as Maung Kyaw, who was convicted in January by a closed military court of offenses involving explosives, bombings and financing terrorism.

He had ties to Australia according to reports, and had met former Prime Minister Julia Gillard when visiting for a course.

His wife, Thazin Nyunt Aung, told the AP she had not been informed his execution had been carried out.

"I am still trying to confirm it myself," she said.

The 41-year-old had been arrested last November based on information from people detained for shooting security personnel, state media said at the time.

He was also accused of being a key figure in a network that carried out what the military described as terrorist attacks in Yangon, the country's biggest city.

Phyo Zeya Thaw had been a hip-hop musician before becoming a member of the Generation Wave political movement formed in 2007.

He was jailed in 2008 under a previous military government after being accused of illegal association and possession of foreign currency.

Also executed was Kyaw Min Yu, a 53-year-old democracy activist better known as Ko Jimmy, for violating the counterterrorism law.

Kyaw Min Yu was one of the leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group, veterans of a failed 1988 popular uprising against military rule.

He already had spent more than a dozen years behind bars for political activism before his arrest in Yangon last October.

He had been put on a wanted list for social media postings that allegedly incited unrest and state media said he was accused of terrorist acts including mine attacks and of heading a group called Moon Light Operation to carry out urban guerrilla attacks.

The other two men, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, were convicted of torturing and killing a woman in March 2021 whom they allegedly believed was a military informer.

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Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said the legal proceedings against the four had been "grossly unjust and politically motivated military trials".

"The junta's barbarity and callous disregard for human life aims to chill the anti-coup protest movement," she said following the announcement of the executions.

Thomas Andrews, an independent UN-appointed expert on human rights who had condemned the decision to go ahead with the executions when they were announced in June, called for a strong international response.

"I am outraged and devastated at the news of the junta's execution of Myanmar patriots and champions of human rights and decency," he said in a statement.

"These individuals were tried, convicted and sentenced by a military tribunal without the right of appeal and reportedly without legal counsel, in violation of international human rights law."

Myanmar's Foreign Ministry had rejected the wave of criticism that followed its announcement in June, declaring that Myanmar's judicial system is fair and that Phyo Zeya Thaw and Kyaw Min Yu were "proven to be masterminds of orchestrating full-scale terrorist attacks against innocent civilians to instill fear and disrupt peace and stability."

"They killed at least 50 people," military spokesperson Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun said on live television last month.

He said the decision to hang all four prisoners conformed with the rule of law and the purpose was to prevent similar incidents in the future.

The military's seizure of power from Suu Kyi's elected government triggered peaceful protests that soon escalated to armed resistance and then to widespread fighting that some UN experts characterise as a civil war.

Some resistance groups have engaged in assassinations, drive-by shootings and bombings in urban areas.

Mainstream opposition organizations generally disavow such activities, while supporting armed resistance in rural areas that are more often subject to brutal military attacks.

According to Myanmar law, executions must be approved by the head of the government.

The last judicial execution to be carried out in Myanmar is generally believed to have been of another political offender, student leader Salai Tin Maung Oo, in 1976 under a previous military government led by dictator Ne Win.

In 2014, the sentences of prisoners on death row were commuted to life imprisonment, but several dozen convicts received death sentences between then and last year's takeover.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-governmental organisation that tracks killing and arrests, said on Friday that 2,114 civilians have been killed by security forces since the military takeover.

It said 115 other people had been sentenced to death.