In this case I am not sure that the actual a infection path has been as yet determined, though it is suspected that a visiting parent may have bought it in. People can be very infectious at the pre-symptomatic phase.
In addition with the hospitals that I know about they tend to operate with covid possible, covid probable and covid positive protocols. The covid possible protocols have been tightened in Vic due to the current high level of community spread.
Covid positive protocols can interfere with the ability to give care and so are not used for every patient. As HappyFlyerFamily as already indicated babies need to have close contact for various reasons.
With high levels of community spread some transmission can still happen even with the strictest of protocols. However the strictest protocols are not used for all care as I have noted. Even in the best run hospital there will be some transmission inside of the hospital from time to time. Moreso with high levels of community transmission, and moreso again in hospitals get overloaded as we have seen in Italy, Spain , NY etc but which has not yet been the case in Australia.
Many of you will already know about this, but some may not. The level of people (pre-CV) who washed their hands AFTER going to the toilet has been falling almost constantly since post WW2.
Since the late 90s it has worsened. Prior to then females showed their superiority & washed their hands around 8-10% more (as % of all females) than men did. A survey used to be done in a number of Australian capital cities (at least Sydney & Melb but my memory is a little hazy about others) in around 20 locations per city, all CBD high rise office towers.
Cameras were placed to cover the basins & entry/exit door for a period (2 weeks I think it was) on every floor for the mens & ladies' toilets. When I first came across this survey it was around low 70s of women & mid 60s percent of men washed their hands. Of those less than 40% did it 'correctly' - using soap, rubbing hands for 20+ seconds, covering all parts etc. A large proportion just put their hands under the running water for a second or two.
The last survey I saw (probably a decade or so ago) had significantly FEWER women now washing (55% or so) vs 59% (or there abouts) for men.
A similar survey was run in a number of hospitals - the results WERE QUITE SIMILAR, to my (non-medical professional) dismay. So the politicians in Australia or perhaps the health bureaucrats continuously sweep it under the carpet - liability issues perhaps? Unlike Europe, for example, where hospitals are monitored & required to report every hospital caught infection to their Federal authroities - Australia seemingly prefers not to know. Adopting the 'Yes, Minister' approach being the order of the day.
So the following is no surprise:
Surviving hospital: infections - hospitals and medical ... - Choice
www.choice.com.au › health-and-body › medical-treatments › articles
... is to come out sicker than
when you went in. It's estimated that 200,000
hospital-acquired
infections are
caught by patients in
Australian hospitals each year
Infections, like taxes, are inevitable (to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin). Most are acquired in the community and the dangerous ones are, in the main, very difficult to prevent. But many infections are…
theconversation.com
"Our antipodean Semmelweis,
Professor Lindsay Grayson, leads the Commonwealth government-funded
Hand Hygiene Australia. As a result of this program, which promotes alcohol-based hand rub instead of soap and water, hand hygiene compliance in Australian hospitals has
increased from less than 50% to 75.7% in just three years."
Does anyone else find it alarming that in the 2010s - less than half of all hospital staff washed their hands as required? Yes, I suppose I am being 'glass half empty' here.
"But this remarkable achievement in hand hygiene was spoilt by one disturbing statistic – doctors only increased their compliance rate to
62.2% in 2012, showing us to be the poorest performing of all the health professions."
Australia does not have a national system that collects data on hospital acquired infections. But new research has shed light on how many do occur each year across the country.
theconversation.com
...so perhaps what is happening in the predominantly private sector nursing homes often using low paid staff with English as their second language is MUCH better than should have been expected compared with the behaviour of doctors in hospitals have been doing.
BTW - did you know a death in hospital is self-investigated by the hospital not the coroner, at least that's the case in NSW. At a 'meeting' where there were 3 legal reps for the hospital attending (without being introduced as such) over me catching the major teaching hospital out over a cover-up of multiple acts of negligence (3 very potentially fatal), the chief bureaucrat for the hospital tried the tactic of saying; "If you knew how many fatal mistakes made by doctors here are discovered by the nurses each day & fixed before killing the patient, you'd be surprised."
To which I replied, "No, I wouldn't be since I've caught 9 so far myself."
Moral of the story - It is up to each person to act responsibly &
to speak out politely if you see something wrong
7news.com.au
