A RECENT COVID exposure in the waiting room at John Hunter Hospital's emergency department - coupled with a growing list of venues of concern - has offered a glimpse at how quickly the Delta variant of the virus can impact a workforce already feeling over-stretched and under pressure, staff say.
As close and casual contacts at the hospital were forced into isolation last week, staff members told the Newcastle Herald there had initially been "huge ramifications" on the workforce; exacerbated by an increasing number of community exposure sites which rendered dozens of frontline health workers temporarily unable to work.
Dr Paul Craven, Hunter New England Health's COVID-19 medical controller, said they were grateful that when they traced the ED exposure, they did not have too many close-contact staff and that they had a staff of more than 17,000 in Hunter New England to draw on should there be problems.
"We were still able to fully staff the ED," he said.
But with the expectation that case numbers and exposure sites will continue to grow, Dr Craven called for honesty from people presenting to hospital, to ensure the risks to staff and other patients were mitigated.
"If you are a close contact, or have symptoms, please let us know at the front door," Dr Craven said. "We do screen everybody, and we ask them all the right questions, but we don't always get the answers that people should be providing. If they don't let us know they are a close contact, or they've been to one of those venues, or they have signs of COVID, they are going to wait in the general waiting room. So we ask people to declare things, be honest. We're not going to be angry. We know what to do, and we do it really well when people are honest with us."
Dr Craven said with new exposure sites being listed everyday, it was inevitable some health staff could be required to isolate too.
"We will lose staff when that happens. Just like the general public, they need to get tested and isolate in those circumstances," he said. "We're not going to get on top of it just yet. We haven't been in lockdown long enough.
"COVID is so incredibly infectious. But we can get on top of this and actually get COVID out of our community again, but we do have to have that little bit of pain now for a long term gain. We have to get rid of the virus that is spreading, and to do that, we have to follow the rules."
All staff in the Hunter's emergency departments are now wearing goggles and fit-tested N95/P2 masks, and also don gowns and gloves when helping a patient suspected of having COVID-19.
They had set up dedicated wards for COVID patients and COVID-pending patients, and all staff in high risk areas were vaccinated. They had also "swelled" the contact tracing team again.
