01 July 2021

Dear colleagues,

Queensland recorded four new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours including one community case that is not linked to current clusters.

Contact tracing for a number of clusters continues and is well advanced. Each new case though means that there is additions that will be made to the contact tracing (exposure sites) website and I encourage you to monitor this website twice a day. If you find an exposure site that affects you, please follow the advice on the website.

Secondary close contacts

We’ve had further clarification overnight about what healthcare workers need to do if one of your household contacts is determined to be a close contact. This is slightly different to what we have previously been asked to do, and the change is due to high the “R naught” (R₀) of the current COVID-19 variants within our community – i.e. reflects how contagious this disease is.

Let me explain this secondary close contact rule:

• If my husband was determined to be a close contact, he would be asked to go into home quarantine.
• The contact tracers would ask my husband if he lived with a healthcare or vulnerable care worker. I would be identified as a healthcare worker of the close contact (my husband) because I work at a hospital.
• I would then need to isolate myself from my husband and everyone in the community until my husband had returned two negative tests 24 hours apart.
• I can only return to work after my husband has returned the two negative tests.
• My husband would still need to complete his 14 days of quarantine, but I could go to and from work after his two negative tests.

I understand that this will impact our workplaces and encourage you to contact your supervisor if you find yourself in this situation. Your supervisor will work with you to identify if there is any work from home options (even in alternate roles) or other leave arrangements.

Vaccine update

It is apparent that the current series of outbreaks is encouraging interest in COVID-19 vaccination. Yesterday was a bumper vaccine day with 4531 vaccinations delivered across the health service. STARS has also passed the 50,000 vaccines mark! This is an extraordinary effort from all the team, and I would like to thank everyone for their hard work and dedication.

I particularly encourage anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated yet to come in and get vaccinated. We are looking to arrange specific additional lanes in our community clinics for Metro North staff vaccination. I will give you more information about this tomorrow.

However, as you would have heard in the media by now, our Pfizer vaccine stock levels are limited for the short term. At this stage it looks like we will fully utilise the supply available to us before our next delivery is due. This means we need to put measures in place to balance delivery of our remaining supply with this unprecedented demand.

Effective today 1 July, Metro North Health will limit walk-ins for Pfizer vaccine to the following groups:

• second dose vaccination
• all healthcare workers
• aged care and disability care workers
• aircrew, quarantine and border workers
• critical and high-risk workers e.g. emergency services, defence, police, fire and meat processing.

Queensland Health is seeking to secure additional Pfizer vaccines so that we can work to meet the demand for vaccination at this time.

Separately, there is some great news – more GPs are being brought on to deliver Pfizer vaccines and will start delivering these over the coming weeks. This is very exciting for our Metro North population.

Support for staff

This has been a challenging week for the health service, particularly our colleagues at The Prince Charles Hospital who are expertly managing their outbreak response. A number of staff are now in quarantine with the remaining staff pulling together to ensure that our services can continue to be delivered. Our thoughts are will our colleagues.

Please remember to look after yourselves and each other. Remember to eat well, sleep well and look after your health and wellbeing. There is also support available through our employee assistance provider Benestar, which is available to all Metro North staff. Information about the program is available on QHEPS or you can call the Benestar 24-hour support line on 1300 360 364.

Kind regards,

Dr Liz Rushbrook
Metro North Incident Controller

Metro North HHS – overview of cases*

*As at 01/07/2021 at 1400

**Metro North Health has four recorded deaths (one person a return traveller into NSW, who passed away in NSW)   

*** These numbers reflect the cases being managed by Metro North Health.