Intensive carers: The health workers behind Australia's COVID-19 success story

On day one we had three staff swabbing; on day two we had eight, then we had 12 to 14 people – just swabbing. We also had clerical staff to capture the information. We didn’t have enough clerical staff, either, so we trained up some other people from around the hospital to be able to do that. In total we had 20 people running the clinic, which was functional 24 hours a day. At the same time, we also had to get the emergency operations centre up and running. We did that in two days.

We usually have 16 nurses in ED. We didn’t have to radically increase that because the number of people who’d normally show up completely dropped off. I think people thought they had a risk of getting COVID, so they stayed away. Of course, there were still things like cardiac arrests and drug overdoses. And that’s where COVID became this unknown entity: if someone came into ED with a drug overdose, we didn’t know if they had COVID or not.

COVID is more than just a virus. It will be an inflection point in time. As an infectious diseases physician, I’ve been concerned about the anti-vaxxer movement and the general lack of trust in science. But [Australia has warded off COVID] because the politicians have listened to the experts. I think the community has seen the good that comes when you take the politics out of a crisis and let the experts shape the response.

COVID also means cleaning on demand: if there is someone in emergency and they need to be transferred quickly, or if they are moving someone in ICU to a room to make space for a more critical patient, you have to clean that room and get it ready, right then. Normally, most of the cleaning staff would leave by 10pm. With COVID, we have at least one person stay overnight, just to clean the ED.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

GoodWeekendMag Our hospitals weren’t inundated

GoodWeekendMag don't forget about the garbos, bus drivers and others who kept things going as well.

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