With the rate of community transmission of COVID-19 falling in Australia, infectious disease specialists are advocating for the country to move to a system of “sentinel surveillance” – aggressively testing vulnerable groups, including aged care residents and prisoners – if the Government wants to ease lockdown restrictions.
Professor Greg Dore, an Infectious Diseases Physician at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney told The Australian he backed the Federal Government’s plan to begin easing restrictions around mid-May, but said people living in aged care homes, who are homeless or incarcerated must be tested more randomly – even if they show no symptoms.
“These are settings (where) in other countries we know the virus has been rapidly transmitted,” he said.
The comments come as the NSW Corrections Department announced it was preparing to begin blanket coronavirus testing of all new inmates in an effort to prevent the virus from entering the NSW prison system.
All new prisoners were already being required to quarantine for 14 days before joining the general population, but now any inmate identified as a suspected COVID-19 case will be immediately provided with a surgical mask and isolated in a separate cell for testing, treatment and close monitoring.
NSW Corrections has also provided staff with thermal scanners and hand-held thermometers to monitor for symptoms of coronavirus.
