Palm Lake has 25 locations, including aged care, retirement villages and land lease communities.
CEO Manuel Lang says a couple from their Toowoomba Pinnacle community returned from a holiday on the Sea Princess and went immediately into self-isolation as required by the Government, but one member of the couple has tested positive for the virus.
"These two residents have not been out into the greater community at all and, to the best of our knowledge, have had no contact with any other resident or staff member of our resort,” Manuel says.
The CEO told me the case came after Palm Lake made the pre-emptive decision to lock down all major resort facilities and cancel their weekly organised activities across all their locations and ahead of the Government’s restrictions on public gatherings.
These were met with a mixed response by residents, but Manuel says they are providing residents with free home-delivered soup and rolls from their resort kitchens as well as early morning shopping bus runs to help them take advantage of the community hours for seniors being run by supermarkets.
“Our resort caretakers have stocks of essential products on-site to assist any residents in difficulty, and these caretakers are also performing regular welfare checks on our residents while they are in isolation,” he said.
Palm Lake has also hired an external contractor to complete a comprehensive sanitisation of their largest Queensland resorts which started on Thursday. Including their Country Clubs and club houses, sales centres, all external common areas and vehicles.
Manuel also revealed they are also in discussions with the Queensland Government to offer them use of their almost completed 102-bed aged care site at Beachmere, 55km north of Brisbane. A similar building under construction at Toowoomba, adjacent to the Toowoomba resort, will also be made available to the Government if needed.
“The coronavirus crisis has stunned us all, but … we have retained our full workforce including our casual staff, finding other work for them if their roles have been affected,” Manuel said. “We are more than confident in our preparations and planning around this pandemic.”
