Princess Alexandra Hospital Ward 5D isolation rooms being converted to “best practice”

An external report into the cause of two COVID-19 clusters linked to the PA Hospital’s Ward 5D will be delivered in the coming month. It comes as the ward undergoes a major overhaul.

Isolation rooms inside the Princess Alexandra Hospital’s infectious disease ward 5D are being converted to “best practice care” negative pressure rooms after two coronavirus clusters earlier this year.

The revamp comes ahead of an external reviewer’s report expected to be handed to the Metro South Hospital and Health Service “in the coming month” into the cause of the two COVID-19 virus outbreaks.

Eight beds in the 20-bed Ward 5D have reopened since the unit was closed and deep cleaning ordered amid the hospital’s coronavirus clusters in March and April.

Outside the Princess Alexandra Hospital during the Ward 5D COVID-19 virus outbreaks earlier this year. Picture: Dan Peled.

A Metro South spokeswoman said the Princess Alexandra Hospital was committed to reopening all of the ward “as soon as possible”.

Ward 5D has 14 single rooms. Four of them were already configured as negative pressure rooms before the clusters.

“Work is ongoing in the ward to convert all single rooms to negative pressure rooms to provide best practice care for patients with a variety of infectious diseases,” a Metro South HHS spokeswoman said.

The Princess Alexandra Hospital is currently not caring for any cases of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Queensland has 12 active cases of the virus after one new infection was recorded in hotel quarantine yesterday.

That takes the total number of known cases in Queensland since the pandemic began to 1633.

The latest overseas-acquired infection was in a person who had recently travelled from the US.

About 580 Princess Alexandra Hospital workers were forced into quarantine earlier this year to minimise the potential for further virus transmission as a result of the two Ward 5D clusters.

Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital. Picture: Dan Peled.

A doctor and three nurses were infected during the outbreaks, involving a total of 23 cases – 10 in the first cluster and 13 in the second.

Engineers were called in to the hospital to assess air circulation as a potential cause for the clusters.

But details of what was found are yet to be made public.

Genomic sequencing traced the clusters back to two Princess Alexandra Hospital patients – a man who had arrived into Queensland from Europe and another man who was diagnosed with COVID-19 after flying in from India.

A nurse infected during one of the outbreaks spread the virus to friends and a male stripper at a Byron Bay hens’ party while not realising she was infectious.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has previously committed to making public the result of investigations into the hospital clusters.