Angaston District Hospital becomes SA’s first Covid-only facility

Patients are being moved to an SA-first Covid-only hospital in the Barossa, according to the latest new plans to tackle the ballooning virus outbreak.

South Australia’s first dedicated Covid-19 hospital will open in the Barossa Valley on Monday while a major new testing blunder left dozens of people in the community for days with wrong results.

Angaston District Hospital will treat up to 21 infectious ­patients amid rising Omicron cases and “high levels of Covid-19 in the community”, SA Health said on Saturday.

Specially trained medicos will treat local cases with mild symptoms but medium or high-risk patients will be transferred to one of three Adelaide hospitals with Covid wards.

Existing patients were transferred on Saturday to ­Kapunda Hospital, discharged home or returned to hospitals in Gawler and Mt Pleasant.

Tanunda’s emergency ­department will treat critical, non-virus patients, forcing its local testing clinic to close and move to Nuriootpa on Sunday.

In the second testing failure in a fortnight, SA Pathology on Saturday revealed 67 patients were last week sent false results, leaving doctors scrambling to track them all down.

There was a similar blunder on New Year’s Eve, which prompted an overhaul and a promise to avoid such an incident being repeated. That failure involved 11 ­patients.

Premier Steven Marshall and Professor Nicola Spurrier. Picture: Emma Brasier

Tuesday’s blunder, which forced a second official apology, sent a wrong text message to 34 patients advising an initial negative result was actually a positive reading.

A further 33 people were told they had positive results but were, in fact, clear.

The blunder, identified four days later on Friday, meant ­infectious patients were not sent into 10 days’ quarantine.

Sources said it was a “technical lab issue” that was different from last month’s failure.

“We have a team of doctors contacting each ­individual ­affected to explain the situation and apologise for any ­inconvenience caused,” an SA Pathology spokeswoman said.

“We have reviewed and updated our processes, which will be implemented on Monday, to avoid a similar incident happening again.” SA Health released details two hours after Premier Steven Marshall’s public briefing on Saturday.

The Covid Ready Committee, which Mr Marshall chairs, was “briefly” told about the mistake on Saturday morning.

Officials said no details were available ready for the Premier’s public briefing.

Meanwhile, leaked internal documents show the Royal Adelaide Hospital this week exceeded its “functional capacity” under the state’s Covid disaster plan.

Under an escalating five- level system of responding to demand, the RAH reached the top level of “CoSTAT 5” on Tuesday, forcing SA Health to expand its Covid hospital plan.

This level indicates “functional capacity exceeded” and is sparked when all available space is used. It calls for “unorthodox” capacity options.

It only allows for between 145 and 207 Covid patients.

SA Health treated acute cases at Flinders Medical Centre and Lyell McEwin Hospital from Wednesday and at existing Royal Adelaide wards. Some mental health wards have also closed.

Mr Marshall revealed four more deaths on Saturday, bringing the tally to 40. A woman in her 80s, two females in their 90s and a man also in his 90s died in Adelaide.

SA Health recorded 4349 cases on Saturday – 1330 fewer than in the previous in 24 hours – and 10 people were discharged from hospital.

On Saturday 236 people were recovering in metropolitan hospitals while 26 people were in ICU – down 10 in a day – with seven ventilated.

Mr Marshall said there were 567 sick SA Health workers and 351 in isolation.