Dear colleagues,

As we continue to see steadying numbers of COVID-19 cases, we are actively planning for how we manage the healthcare needs of our community moving forward. We are currently working up these details and will share an update with you as soon as possible.

For now, today’s updates include:

• Expansion of testing criteria
• Workforce reallocation survey – last day to complete
• Feedback on patient care

Expansion of testing criteria

Overnight the Chief Health Officer announced an expansion of the testing criteria to include people who work as Queensland Police Officers. This important update prioritises the health of other essential workers and will help us better identify and respond to community transmission.

This advice is found in COVID-19 Public Health Alert No. 11 and states that COVID-19 testing should only occur if a person:

• has a fever (or history of fever) OR acute respiratory symptoms (sore throat, cough, or shortness of breath)

AND

• has been in close contact with, or are a household contact of, someone who is a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19, OR
• has been overseas, including on a cruise, in the past 14 days, OR
• works in vulnerable settings such as healthcare, aged or residential care, military, a school or childcare, correction facilities, detention centres and boarding schools, OR
• lives in Brisbane, Gold Coast or Cairns, OR
• lives in, or travelled from, a COVID-19 hotspot, OR
• lives in, or travelled from, another state, OR
• lives in a First Nations community, OR
• works as a Queensland Police Officer.

Our pathology testing guidance and other resources will be updated tomorrow to reflect these changes.

Workforce reallocation survey

There’s just one day left to complete our workforce reallocation survey! This information is helping us manage our workforce needs so we can best keep up with the ebb and flow of COVID-19.

We’ve had a large number of you respond and this has been great to see. If you haven’t done yet, please jump on and fill in your details by tomorrow.

Feedback on patient care

I’d like to share with you some feedback I received from a recently recovered COVID-19 patient. This person said:

My sincere thanks to all the people I had contact with, particularly the Virtual Ward Nurses. 

I wrote down some of names of the Nurses who spoke to me. I hope I haven’t left any out when I say a very special thank you to Sharon, Bec, Kylie, Abbey, Shaun, Wendy, Kate, Sue and Lisa. I sincerely hope I didn’t miss anyone (if I did, I am terribly sorry) but please know that I have the highest regard for each and every one of the people who called.  You should be very proud of the great manner in which you interact with your patients – very professional and compassionate and a credit to your health service. Well done to you all and very much appreciated!

Feedback like this shows the impact you have on the lives of others. Thank you to ALL of our brave staff who are supporting our unwell COVID-19 patients and who have supported 253 patients to recovery. Despite these challenging times, you continue to deliver exceptional and compassionate healthcare.

Today marks a whole week of sharing the chair with my colleague Liz – and what a week it’s been! Every single day, I leave feeling inspired by your adaptability and can-do attitude! As long as we continue to together and support each other, I am confident nothing can stand in the way of our Metro North team.

I hope you find time to rest and recharge where you can, connect with loved ones at home or with the aid of technology. I’ll be spending my weekend doing exactly that and showing my husband cute pictures of dogs to slowly convince him we need one for ourselves. I adore my grandfurr babies but I’m more than ready to be promoted to Dog Mum status.

Take care and stay healthy and please know your hard work, dedication, commitment have not gone unnoticed, and you are most valued in MNHHS.

Regards,

Adjunct Professor Alanna Geary

Metro North Health Incident Controller

Metro North HHS – Overview of Cases*

Confirmed COVID-19 Cases
Virtual Ward	Inpatient Ward	Inpatient ICU	Recovered	Fever clinic presentations over 24 hours
54	6	5	253	276

*With effect 1000 16 April 2020
**Metro North has two recorded deaths
*** These number reflect the cases being managed by Metro North