Hi everyone,
Things have really started to turn around this week with low levels of COVID-19 cases reported in Melbourne and within other states. Today there has been further good news with the announcement that if there are no further cases of community transmission as of midnight tonight, SAPOL will allow the border to open to New South Wales possibly as early as Wednesday evening.
As you are aware from our COVID-19 live stream earlier this month, we currently remain on CoSTAT1. The Incident Management Team have reduced their meetings to once per week and as such this will be my last Tuesday COVID-19 Bulletin.
Recognising that PPE continues to be of interest for you, the Wednesday CALHN Update will include information on PPE stock levels and I will continue to provide a summary of our COVID-19 activities each week in my Friday message. Be assured, I will certainly be back in contact between my weekly messages should something critical occur.
PPE update
As of today, we have 47.1 days of N95 masks, 25.2 days of surgical L3 masks, 14.1 days of surgical L2 masks and 18.5 days of surgical gowns available on site.
Change to RAH COVID-19 Clinic hours
From this Saturday, 26 September the RAH COVID-19 Clinic will reduce its operating hours in line with other clinics across the state. The new clinic hours will be 9am – 6pm, 7-days per week.
Refreshed COVID-19 signage
Some of you may have seen today that we have begun to refresh our signage across the RAH to help provide better directions to the COVID-19 Clinic, to our car parks and to promote physical distancing across the hospital. Similar signage will be rolled out at TQEH within the next week and at our other sites shortly.
If you see outdated signage across our sites, you are welcome to remove it. If you need new signage or would like to request a particular sign for your area please contact healthcalhncommunications@sa.gov.au
Current situation
Like you all I was pleased to hear that again there are no new cases in South Australia.
Victoria has recorded 28 new cases and three deaths. The 14-day rolling average is currently at 34.4 which is down from the previous rolling average of 45.
New South Wales has reported two new cases which are returned travellers in hotel quarantine. It is the first time since 8 July since there were no locally acquired cases which is all good signs for our borders reopening this week.
Over the weekend the RAH Clinic tested 73 people and TQEH Clinic tested 16 people.
As I continue to remind everyone, it is very important that we remember to maintain physical distancing to ensure that we keep our patients, visitors and staff safe, and if you’re sick – stay home - and get tested!
Testing is so important and as Nicola Spurrier said at this mornings press conference 'we will not know if we have COVID-19 unless people get tested!' If you do go for a COVID-19 test, please remember to complete a self-reporting form and self-quarantine until you receive your results back.
And as I always say...‘If not us...then who’.
Lesley Dwyer
Chief Executive Officer
Central Adelaide Local Health Network