8 August 2021

Dear colleagues,

The news for Metro North today is very encouraging.

The lockdown for Brisbane City, Moreton Bay, and nine other local government areas in South-East Queensland ended at 4pm today.

Other changes announced this morning by the Premier and Chief Health Officer include:

• A relaxation of visitor restrictions for hospitals and aged care facilities now that our facilities are no longer restricted hospitals
• Schools to reopen on Monday
• New mask-wearing requirements for teachers and high-school students
• An immediate three-day lockdown for the Cairns and Yarrabah Local Government Areas.

Metro North will formally review our response posture tomorrow. For the rest of today and on Monday, Metro North will remain on a Tier 2 footing, using moderate risk PPE, and with our fever clinic staff and emergency department triage staff wearing P2/N95 masks.

We are now supporting visitors to our patients. It is important to support visitors to comply with the wearing of masks and to stay home if they have any symptoms of COVID-19.

What are the remaining requirements?

All staff must continue to wear masks at work. The only exception is if you are working in an office alone with the door closed.

Please continue to physically distance where you can. We need to limit our gatherings to 1 per 2m² if the room/venue is less than 200m², or 1 per 4m² in a larger room/venues. Outdoor requirements are 1 per 2m².

All staff must also continue to check-in using the QR codes. This is a great way to register your movement in and about our Health Service in the event that a COVID-19 positive case visits our hospitals or work-areas.

I encourage you to continue to review the Queensland Health contact tracing website on at least a daily basis.

Requirements for students

There are some remaining restrictions for students who are undertaking clinical placements. For at least the next two weeks, only fully vaccinated students are able to return to clinical placements at our facilities.

Our health community 

There are now more than 11,000 people in home quarantine. This number includes many staff and health workers from Metro North. While the lockdown for South-East Queensland ends today, these people and families will remain in quarantine. They all deserve our support, thanks and admiration – what they’re doing is not easy, but it is essential. We hope to see many of them return to work at the end of next week.

Our thoughts are with those families that have been brushed by COVID-19 during this outbreak. They will be caring for their loved ones, and then will be required to complete a further period of 14 days quarantine. Please look out for your colleagues who have found themselves in this situation.

Thank you to everyone within Metro North who has supported extended fever clinic hours and additional testing sites over the past week. These efforts have contributed significantly to our lockdown ending today.

Dr Liz Rushbrook
Metro North Incident Controller

Metro North HHS – overview of cases*

*As at 8/08/2021 at 1000
**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.