Hospital COVID crisis: PA in lockdown, Mater staff sent home

The Princess Alexandra Hospital has been put in lockdown, with a new case of COVID-19 recorded today linked to the facility. Meanwhile, staff are being sent home from Mater Mothers’ Hospital.

The Princess Alexandra Hospital is currently in lockdown and is only taking the most critical patients due to Queensland’s current COVID outbreak.

At least one new COVID-19 case has been recorded today and is linked to the PA Hospital.

Meanwhile, Mater Mothers’ Hospital has sent staff home after a recent visitor tested positive to COVID-19.

It is understood the person visited the private maternity section as well as a nearby coffee shop that staff frequented.

Staff have been sent home from Mater Mothers’ Hospital after a COVID case visited the maternity section.

The staff sent home included midwives and doctors.

An email that was addressed to all Mater Health staff instructed those who had either visited or been in contact with people from floor 12 of Mater Mothers’ Hospital South Brisbane from 11:30am on Friday to get tested.

“If you have not been contacted by contact tracers, but fall within the above category, we encourage you to take this precautionary measure,” the email from Regional Executive Director Linda Pratt read.

The email also said staff within this group could return to work so long as they are asymptomatic.

In an alert sent to Princess Alexandra Hospital staff on Tuesday afternoon, staff have been told if they have worked at the hospital campus from noon today, then they should not work in another Metro South Health facility until the lockdown is removed.

“If you have been in ward 5D since 18 March 2021, then you should be tested and receive a negative result before working in another facility,” the directive said.

The PA Hospital is the source of two cases of COVID which forced Greater Brisbane into a snap three-day lockdown.

An unvaccinated Princess Alexandra Hospital doctor – along with two others – tested positive to COVID-19 in early March.

The doctor was infected by a hotel quarantine guest who had the UK-strain of COVID-19. That person is also believed to have infected another hotel quarantine guest, even though their rooms weren’t adjoining.

A subsequent case popped up last Friday in a 26-year-old Stafford man whose genomic sequencing linked him to the doctor’s virus.

A close contact of the Stafford man – a Strathpine man – then tested positive – along two of the Strathpine man’s colleagues and his brother.

This cluster stands at eight with two more cases under investigation which Dr Young believes are older cases.

An unvaccinated Princess Alexandra Hospital nurse is believed to have contracted COVID-19 while working a shift on March 23.

Her virus genomic sequencing links to the same virus of a traveller who tested positive after returning from India. He was being treated at the hospital.

She is then understood to have infected her sister along with several others after spending a weekend in a holiday house during a hen’s party at Byron Bay.

The cluster stands at eight with another one case under investigation