Kylie Lang: Hospital Covid deaths set Qld Health up for class action

Covid remains a part of our life but why are we now ignoring it?

There’s nothing but a good conscience to stop a doctor or any other healthcare professional from going to work while knowingly infected with Covid-19.

There is also no mandate for hospital staff to wear masks or be vaccinated against the viral disease.

My, how quickly things change.

Hard rules have become soft recommendations. The defiance of mandates that saw health workers sacked as Queensland navigated the pandemic has disappeared, with personal choice now perfectly OK – and in a Covid wave, no less.

“Medical negligence” is how one doctor puts it – and I have to agree because the abhorrent consequence is that Queenslanders admitted to hospital for routine procedures are winding up dead after catching the virus. Imagine being told your grandmother, mother or partner who went in for a hip operation wasn’t coming home because, whoops, she contracted Covid.

Are we to accept that Covid is the new golden staph?

As The Courier-Mail reported on Friday, hundreds of Queenslanders have died after hospital-acquired Covid while being treated for other conditions. However, it seems precious little is being done about it.

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Gone are the days of full PPE when it comes to Covid at Queensland hospitals. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Josh Woning

Learning to live with Covid – as we’re told we now must do – shouldn’t mean ignoring it.

Data obtained through a right-to-information application reveals from January 2022 to June 2023 an average of 14 patients contracted Covid daily. This preventable situation is not confined to these time frames.

It is ongoing, but we don’t know the extent because the figures aren’t publicly reported. We do know that as of January 15, there were 311 people in hospital with the virus.

The Australian Medical Association first raised concerns about poor infection control with chief health officer John Gerrard in November last year. It took writing to him a second time, on January 11, to receive a reply, a week later, in which he said response protocols “must be balanced and proportionate”.

This week Dr Gerrard told The Courier-Mail: “Expert infection control teams within each health service assess the risk of Covid-19 transmission continually and implement measures based on that assessment.” Either these teams are not exactly “expert” or the measures they are using are not up to scratch.

AMA Queensland president Maria Boulton tells me while some hospitals have excellent infection control procedures, it is “hodgepodge”.

“We are in a (Covid) wave and have been for 12 to 13 weeks – but simple measures that worked so well seem to have been forgotten,” Dr Boulton says. “No healthcare worker wants their patient to get an infection – we work really hard to avoid that, but we don’t have control over the system.”

Chief health officer Dr John Gerard. Pics Adam Head

Dr Boulton says isolating people with infections is a Queensland Health responsibility because it runs the state’s public hospitals.

“Above all, when a patient goes into hospital they trust they will get great quality care but they certainly don’t expect to get Covid,” she says.

“Inadvertently, some healthcare workers might have it before showing symptoms but Queensland Health needs to investigate why so many patients are getting it.”

Dr Boulton says “multiple doctors over many hospitals across the state” have reported poor infection-protection measures. It is all very well for the government, via its December updated website, to advise employees that vaccination, hand washing and staying home when sick will minimise the spread of Covid, and to wear masks if you have it and keep 1.5m away from others.

But clearly, advice is not enough.

The website also states (the bleeding obvious): “Healthcare workers hold key professional responsibilities exemplified in the expectation to act in the best interests of patients and a duty in the code of conduct to minimise the risk of harm to others.”

The pressing question is how can the performance of these responsibilities be enforced when the government no longer has its eye on the ball? “Expecting” people to do the right thing rarely works.

A doctor who wished to remain anonymous told The Courier-Mail healthcare workers were “now making their own decisions on protection”, including masks.

“It is inevitable that one day soon Queensland Health will be the target of a class action … the lack of enforced safety protocols, where there is evidence that people are dying, is medical negligence.”

Too right.

Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
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