A reminder warning that masks is not 100% effective........of course I don’t know how these people actually got infected.
Outbreak at Melbourne's St Vincent's hospital
There has been a coronavirus outbreak at Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital in a ward that provides care to immuno-comprised patients with complex multi-system disorders and single organ donation problems.
Six staff thus far have tested positive to COVID-19 in the hospital's general medicine ward.
Staff in the ward must wear PPE at all times, and all patients are being treated as if they're COVID-19 positive.
Looking at an article on it (yours may have been different) that I can see:
The Today show claimed six nurses from one ward at St Vincent‘s Hospital in Melbourne tested positive to COVID-19 in the past week.
They had been raising concerns around infection control measures to management, with those nurses and all other staff instructed to wear PPE and all patients admitted to the hospital to be treated as COVID-19 positive.
Comment: I don't know about St Vincents but as a precaution at my daughter's hospital as of 1 July staff were instructed to treat all patients and colleagues as Covid possible. If actually in a Covid Positive Ward the PPE protocol is stricter with a higher level of PPE worn.
A St Vincent’s Hospital spokesperson confirmed “a number” of staff who worked on a general medicine ward at had tested positive to COVID-19 and were in isolation.
“Contact tracing is underway and close contact staff are being placed in precautionary quarantine as that process continues based on potential exposure,” they said.
“To minimise risk to our patients and staff, we have commenced asymptomatic testing of all staff who work on this ward.
And this last part
“As of Thursday 30 July, this general medicine ward is now operating as a COVID-19 ward. All patients admitted to this ward only will be COVID-19 positive or suspected to have COVID-19. This does not apply to the whole hospital.”
This may or may not be linked to the staff infections, who may or may not have been infected at work. It may just be due to managing the overall hospital caseloads.
I have no specific knowledge of St Vincents. But the ones I do know about wards have been repurposed on a regular basis since the pandemic started, and indeed prior as changes have happened from time to time. Changing the function of wards is a normal part of hospital management depending what the cases are. At various stages my daughter's ward has been a Covid ward on and off. For a while when the Gen Med ward was made into a Covid ward her ward took over the more severe Gen Med cases and ones with psych issues. Her function has changed twice since and they now a Covid Overflow ward.
Since the second wave hit most, if not all major hospitals have repurposed more wards to be various types of Covid 19 wards. At the hospital my daughter is at they have gone from 1 to 4 Covid wards. Depending on the situation this may increase or decrease. When cases were down to virtually zero and elective and other surgeries were back in full swing and there was only one mainly empty Covid ward.
Note also with all but urgent elective surgery now cancelled, wards can be repurposed. In addition, note that patients/residents from nursing homes have been moved to hospitals and they will have gone in to Covid wards, or Covid possible wards. The nursing home patient admissions have most likely caused some re-arrangements of wards.
. Yes, even during a pandemic, I'm a proud DYKWIA!).
You can bet Media Watch will be all over it.
