Health authorities would be silly not to plan for a situation where COVID positive workers are brought back for essential roles as cases rise in the ACT and the healthcare workforce comes under significant strain, the chief health officer has said.
Dr Kerryn Coleman said COVID-positive healthcare staff had not been brought back to work in the ACT yet, but it was a future possibility.
"We would never ask an unwell worker to come back and we would only ever ask a well worker who is a positive case to come back if we were sure about the risk settings around that," Dr Coleman said on Wednesday.
"It's not currently happening in the ACT, but we would be silly not to plan for that, because the last thing we want is for people to not receive the required care on the basis that we're too scared to try something like that."
A clinic for COVID-19 positive people will be opened at the Garran surge centre next week to treat people with minor health care needs away from the emergency department, ahead of an expected increase in the number of COVID patients in hospital.
There were 16 people in hospital because of COVID-19 at 8pm on Tuesday, with one person in intensive care, and one on ventilation. Health authorities expect there could be as many as 60 people hospitalised by the end of next week.
Canberra Health Services acting chief executive Cathy O'Neill said 60 ward beds had been identified to treat people with respiratory symptoms of COVID-19 but capacity to treat COVID patients was a "moving feast".
"I'm not so concerned with physical capacity, our real constraint will be around workforce and we have a number of pressures on our staffing at the moment," Ms O'Neill said.
Ms O'Neill said there were about 70 healthcare staff furloughed due to COVID-19 exposures and some staff had been brought back early from quarantine following a risk assessment.
"We have quite a measured approach where we risk-assess anybody who's had an exposure. Anybody that we do bring back to the workplace won't be working in areas where there are people that are vulnerable to severe disease," she said.
Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the hospital system was well placed to meet expected demand for COVID hospitalisations over the next week, which is expected to be between 19 and 60 patients, with up to 10 people in intensive care.
Ms Stephen-Smith said COVID wards would be used only for people with respiratory conditions, while other people who have COVID-19 but are in hospital for other treatments would be cared for on the appropriate ward for that treatment. Vulnerable people will be cared for in separate wards, which will open later this week.
"When we say the teams are going to act as if every patient and every staff member could potentially have COVID-19, what that means is we are protecting every other patient and every staff member against transmission," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
