Dear colleagues,

Overnight, Queensland reported 4 additional cases of COVID-19 who are all linked to the known cases from Queensland Corrective Services Academy. This means Queensland now has 24 active cases, of which 19 are linked to the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre and the Queensland Corrective Services Academy clusters. Currently, we do not have any active cases in the Metro North catchment.

These cases make this weekend a critically important time to keep up our physical distancing and hand hygiene practices. Please keep in mind that we are subject to the movement and gathering restrictions at all times, and that the community really does look to healthcare workers to model the required behaviour.

Updated list of venues

Overnight, Queensland Health has expanded its list of venues that confirmed COVID-19 cases have visited. The updated list is available at: https://www.qld.gov.au/health/conditions/health-alerts/coronavirus-covid-19/current-status/contact-tracing.

Please pay close attention to the new locations. If you have visited any location, please follow the guidance on the website. In most occasions, if you have not otherwise been contacted by Public Health, you will be considered a casual contact and therefore required to closely monitor your symptoms, and come forward to be tested if you develop symptoms – no matter how mild.

As we learn more about today’s cases, we will keep you updated as more venues are listed.

Support persons for people attending appointment 

Many of you are familiar with the latest Hospital Visitors Direction and have been supporting our patients to connect with their loved ones virtually. Thank you.

For people attending outpatient appointments who require support, necessary support persons can attend this appointment with them using the provision of ‘other compassionate grounds’.  Examples include carers for people with impairment or disability or a family member that is an interpreter.  Contracted interpreter services are considered staff and able to attend for the purposes of interpreter services.

If you are unsure if a visitor is allowed, please escalate the question to your Directorate EOC who will be happy to help.

Please remember that all visitors, patients and people attending appointments will have to register upon arrival, and, of course, wear a flat surgical mask whilst they are in the hospital.

Reminder: PPE for clinicians

We have answered many questions around PPE and masks this week in our vidcasts. Thank you for your participation and enthusiasm. One question that continues to resurface is the PPE requirements for clinicians.

The Director General / Chief Health Officer memo requires that if you are providing routine care within 1.5m of any patient, you are to wear, at minimum, a level 2 surgical mask and protective eyewear. Protective eyewear can be worn continuously, even between patients, so long as they are not soiled. If protective eyewear is removed, it should be cleaned (if reusable) or discarded.

If you normally wear glasses, you need to wear protective eyewear over your glasses. There are many different types of protective eyewear that fit comfortably over glasses for you to use.

If your protective eyewear is reusable, please clean them yourself and keep for use throughout the day before returning to centralised storage areas.

Meetings

At the beginning of the week, we asked you to put all non-essential meetings on hold, with all essential meetings to be delivered via Teams. This ensures we are in a position to flex our response resources up to a higher state of readiness (for example, increased testing teams, support for enhanced concierge, increased size of Incident Management Teams and so on).

This requirement remains in force for Metro North and will be reviewed on Monday in consultation with Directorates. If you are not sure if your meeting should go ahead, please discuss with your EOC.

Physical distancing in common rooms

We are very aware of the challenges for physical distancing in common rooms, like tea rooms. We are working with the Directorates to enable suitable additional strategies to help implement this – such as staggering break times, encouraging use of alternate areas and ‘thinning out’ furniture.

This requires all of us to cooperate and come up with some simple solutions.

If you don’t feel safe in a space, I encourage you to think through how to make this safer for you and your teammates. Measure out the square meterage of your common area and discuss the requirements for your physical distancing with your line managers.

There is some great signage on the extranet for you to utilise in your work and common spaces.

Vidcast

If you joined me this morning for the vidcast, you will have seen me broadcasting from the hair salon. I had not realised that we were going to broadcast today and had not cancelled my most precious appointment – I would like to thank everyone who sent encouragement to me and my hairdresser to just ‘roll with it’. For those that missed it – here is the finished product:

There will be another vidcast tomorrow at 11am and no, it won’t be conducted from the salon. I will be joining you again, as well as Chief Executive Shaun Drummond. By then, I’m sure we will have more to share with you about the cases that emerged today.

Enjoy this beautiful Winter’s day in South East Queensland!

Kind regards,
Dr Elizabeth Rushbrook
Metro North Incident Commander

Metro North HHS – Overview of Cases*

HHS	Patients being managed by HHS						FEVER Clinics
	Total In-patients			Virtual Ward / HITH / or similar	Deaths **	Total cases managed by HHS (including recovered) ***	# of clinics	Presentations
		ICU Pts
		ICU-NOT Ventilated	ICU-Ventilated					Last 24 hrs	TOTAL^
MN TOTAL	0	0	0	0	3	342	6	1036	75,797

*With effect 29 August 2020, 1000

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

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