Hi everyone,
Today SA Health has announced changes for the aged care sector which prevents staff from working at more than one site and requires all staff to wear PPE when coming within 1.5 metres of residents.
We will continue to assess any impacts this may have on our services where we provide care for older people and will support our staff to comply with these new directions.
Current situation
Today I am pleased to share that we have had no new COVID-19 cases in South Australia.
Victoria has recorded 278 new cases – down from the record breaking daily toll of 725 cases last week. Sadly, there has been another eight deaths.
New South Wales has reported 18 new cases and Tasmania has one new case over the past 24 hours.
In New Zealand, officials are currently investing the source of their most recent cases.
We are continuing to see high numbers in people presenting for testing. The RAH Clinic has tested 295 people since Monday - this does not include those tested today.
Incident Management Team (IMT) update
Based on the current situation within South Australia we will remain at CoSTAT 1.
The Incident Management Team is officially meeting at least three times a week, and are actively providing oversight to the network’s COVID-19 ongoing planning and response between meetings.
At yesterday’s meeting, the IMT discussed the impact of the COVID-19 response on our workforce and considered how we can use learnings to further inform our future planning.
One of the learnings included the need to better share our overall COVID-19 response. Much of the response planning is coming into the IMT from the programs and we will provide you with more details about the collective COVID-19 response shortly.
As a service, we continue to be incredibly busy and I want to remind everyone that it is important to implement our patient flow strategies where possible to ensure we have capacity ready. We currently have 6GG as a dedicated COVID-19 ward and both 6GA and 4CS are COVID-19 standby wards which will give us the ability to quickly respond should 6GG exceed capacity.
If you have any further suggestions you would like the IMT to consider based upon your experiences, please raise them with your manager to escalate to the IMT.
PPE Update
I want to assure you that we continue to have ample supplies of PPE. Based on our current usage we currently have 19.8 days of supply of N95 masks, 34 days of level 3 masks and 12.7 days of level 2 masks in our stores at the RAH. There is also a significant amount of stock on hand within the distribution centre. Additionally, we have another 7-day supply of PPE in a secure location that can be accessed on request of the IMT should we see a sudden increase in demand.
Visitor guidelines
A reminder that we have developed a number of posters to help you communicate the updated visitor guidelines to patients, visitors and carers.
Click here to download an updated poster for your area.
And as I always say...‘If not us...then who’
Lesley Dwyer
Chief Executive Officer
Central Adelaide Local Health Network