Queensland Health unsure how many staff are still unvaccinated

Queensland Health is scrambling to figure out why a young woman working near Covid-positive patients was unvaccinated, admitting it doesn’t know exactly how much of its workforce are protected yet.

Queensland Health is scrambling to figure out why a woman working near Covid-positive patients was unvaccinated, admitting it doesn’t know exactly how much of its workforce are protected yet.

The department was last night forced to admit it had only vaccinated two thirds of its workforce but wasn’t sure how many more had visited their GP after a receptionist working just outside an infectious ward caught the Delta strain and took it on holiday.

A “furious” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said an investigation would be launched into how the 19-year-old woman was able to work outside the Prince Charles Hospital’s Covid ward without being inoculated, despite a public health order in May stipulating Covid-ward workers must be.

Doctors and the Opposition said it defied common sense the woman wasn’t given the jab before working in such close-proximity to a Covid danger zone and called for all workers anywhere near such patients to be considered frontline.

QH last night released a statement admitting “a total of 66 per cent of all staff have received at least one dose” after Ms Palaszczuk was unable to answer questions at a press conference around how many staff had been vaccinated.

“This does not include staff who may have been vaccinated by their GP,” the statement said.

“By April this year, we had reached practical completion of Phase 1a.

“This means that those who were initially identified as most at risk of exposure to COVID-19 have been offered a chance to be vaccinated.

“This included high-risk frontline workers, quarantine and border workers, and some police officers.”

The Prince Charles Hospital is a location an infected person worked and was not vaccinated.

The revelation the woman had been infectious in the community for 10 days before being tested and potentially exposing scores of people during an interstate holiday saw Ms Palaszczuk flag a “discussion” around whether vaccinations be made compulsory for all QH workers.

A public health direction made by Dr Young on May 31 stipulated that any health worker, QAS staff or contractor “who works in or enters a Covid-19 ward”, cares for Covid-positive patients or transports them must be vaccinated.

They may be asked to prove they are vaccinated by providing their immunisation history statement and anyone failing to comply can be fined, it says.

Ms Palaszczuk said she did not know why the woman, who was employed as a casual, was unvaccinated.

The woman visited Woolworths on Bowser Parade, Sandgate, while infected. PICTURE: Brad Fleet

“Despite the health directives that she should have been vaccinated, she was not … and let me say I am absolutely furious about this,” she said.

“We need to make sure that we are getting our population vaccinated right across the state.”

However, she also conceded “the directive said that she actually needed to be in the ward”.

“She was located outside the ward, so for some reason she wasn’t vaccinated,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“So there will be a full investigation into that.”

“But let’s just say this virus is contagious.

“It is hard to contain it in hotels, it is hard to contain it in hospitals and that’s the truth of the matter.”

Asked whether all QH workers should be required to be vaccinated, Ms Palaszczuk said: “I think we have to have a discussion about that.”

“I think there needs to be a discussion about FIFO workers and flight attendant workers as well.

“I think we need as many people vaccinated as possible.”

AMA Queensland President Professor Chris Perry said Queensland Health had been rolling out vaccines for frontline health workers.

“But it is clear we need this to extend to all hospital workers,” he said.

“We need to take every precaution given how contagious the variants are.

“Immunising the community must also occur as quickly as possible with greater emphasis needed on building community confidence in Covid-19 vaccines.”

Opposition health spokeswoman Ros Bates said officials needed to ensure that anyone who was likely to come into contact with a Covid-positive case got vaccinated.

“You need to protect the public, you need to protect your staff,” Ms Bates said.

“The admin desk is outside the ward – that’s frontline.

“If you have to walk past a receptionist to deal with Covid patients, then you don’t get much more frontline than that.”

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said part of the reason Australia had recorded no Covid deaths this year was because of its “multiple rings of containment” around returned travellers and Covid patients.

“This is a disease which, on a breath, a touch, a surface can be transmitted in one way, shape or form and so it’s a global pandemic.”

He said authorities across Australia were doing well but there was need for “continuous improvement” and “every day we learn and evolve”.