Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been mocked for a bizarre comparison of mask mandates and sunscreen.

Mr Morrison has recently toughened his commentary against mandates, even as NSW COVID cases soar to daily record levels.

On Wednesday, he was quizzed about NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s decision to ditch face marks, as infections started to spiral.

“You don’t have to wait to be told in this country and this is the point I was making yesterday – we’ve all got to be doing sensible things,” he told Nine’s Today show.

“It’s summer, so we should be maximising where we are meeting people outdoors, not indoors.

“We should be washing our hands very regularly. We should be wearing masks indoors when we are in public settings, in shopping centres, things like that.

“We should be doing that. That is the advice.”

Mr Morrison then went a step further. He said the federal government didn’t mandate sunscreen and hats in summer, but many Australians took those precautions anyway.

“In the same way, people should be following that health advice about washing their hands, keeping an appropriate distance, particularly when they’re indoors and wearing masks indoors and especially if you’re around older people and vulnerable people,” he said.

“That is just common sense.”

But social media users were quick to point out that many Australian schools and preschool centres do require sun hats and sunscreen, as do many workplaces.

“Hats and sunscreen mandated for term one and four for students and staff. I’d hate to catch sunburn from one of my students,” wrote one Twitter user.

“Other people not wearing hats and sunscreen don’t endanger the rest of us,” wrote another.

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It is not the first time Mr Morrison has used a sunscreen analogy during the pandemic.

He also used it when launching the government’s much-maligned COVIDSafe app, which was marketed as Australia’s ticket out of lockdown.

“If you want to go outside when the sun is shining, you have got to put sunscreen on. This is the same thing,” he said.

But the app, which cost $8 million and another $75,000 to run every month, has been a flop, with very few contacts identified.

As social services minister, Mr Morrison was also responsible for the federal government introducing a “no jab, no play” policy for childhood immunisations.

His comments on Wednesday came as NSW posted another record daily case tally of 3763. There were two more deaths. Victoria had 1503 infections and six additional deaths.

Both Queensland and the ACT had daily case highs of 186 and 58, respectively. Tasmania notched up 12 more cases.

However, the PM and chief medical officer Paul Kelly were also keen to downplay COVID modelling that predicted Australia might have 200,000 daily by late January or early February.

Assumptions factored into the figure included Australia’s booster shot program not being sped up or expanded and the Omicron variant proving as severe as the Delta strain.

Other factors included states and territories not tightening public health measures, people not changing their own behaviours in the face of rising case tallies and the absence of hospital surge capacity.

“None of these five assumptions represent the likely state of events, let alone all of them together,” Professor Kelly said.

“Presenting that scenario as the likely scenario that will occur is highly misleading.”

He pointed out worst case scenario modelling in 2020 around the number of intensive care beds required was never realised.

“While modelling is an important tool to help guide decision-making, it is just one of a range of tools and cannot be viewed in isolation,” Professor Kelly said.

Mr Morrison said the modelling was an “extreme case scenario that assumes that nobody does anything, nobody gets boosters, there are no changes that take place, no one exercises commonsense”.

But the Australian Medical Association thought the Doherty Institute’s modelling throughout the pandemic had been pretty on the mark.

“I’m confident in the numbers,” vice-president Chris Moy told the Nine Network.

“The million-dollar question is … how many people are going to end up in hospital and in intensive care wards.”

-with AAP