The hospital has established a special ward in preparation for a surge in the number of infected residents, but the state’s Chief Health Officer, Professor Brett Sutton, says sometimes the safest place to treat COVID positive residents is in the home.
Victoria’s Herald Sun is reporting up to 80 people have been infected across 24 aged care homes in Melbourne – 28 are residents and the rest are staff.
As we covered here yesterday, 13 residents have tested positive at Estia’s Ardeer aged care home.
The newspaper claims the Estia outbreak began when a staff member who also worked at Menarock did shifts at both homes after becoming infected.
Allity’s Glendale Aged Care in Werribee has also recorded 13 cases.
Professor Sutton told a press conference yesterday he expected “a couple of hundred individuals at least” will need to be hospitalised in Victoria after testing positive to COVID-19 over the next few weeks.
However, he added it was not always necessary to transfer COVID positive residents to hospital.
“Sometimes the safest place for them is to remain in that facility, but we’ll always make a consideration and it will be a clinical judgement of the treating doctor for those patients,” he said.
“Where we think there’s a risk of transmission within that facility, with we will make a strong recommendation for those patients to move out to an acute health setting but it’s really done on a case-by-case basis.”
But do they want a repeat of the Newmarch House outbreak where a similar clinical decision was made to keep residents in the home?
Families were isolated, resulting in the Prime Minister tearing down the operators and NSW Health for taking a clinical view – and resulted in the ABC’s Four Corners investigation.
Are we at risk of going down the same path again – and do the families want residents to be taken out?
Victoria recorded 270 new coronavirus cases yesterday, its worst rate of positive tests ever at 1.23% of 21,995 tests processed on Monday.
The state now has 1,803 active cases – a jump of 1,422 in the past fortnight.
From these cases, 81 people are in hospital with 26 in intensive care – an increase of nine from yesterday – 21 on ventilators.
