Canterbury Hospital is forced to ship positive Covid cases to other facilities

Canterbury Hospital is dealing with a second Covid outbreak, with positive patients being sent to Royal Prince Alfred and Concord hospitals.

A hospital in the middle of Sydney’s deadliest Covid hotspot is facing another outbreak amid an internal investigation into how five people died from the virus at the facility in ­August.

It can be revealed five ­patients have recently tested positive at Canterbury Hospital after the index case came into the emergency department on August 31.

A staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Daily Telegraph the hospital was “outdated” and “failing”.

Frontline workers are concerned about how the hospital will cope if Royal Prince Alfred and Concord hospitals reach capacity next month.

Hospital management has outlined the details of the outbreak in an internal email obtained by the Telegraph.

A second patient tested positive but was not a close contact of the first case while the third, fourth and fifth cases were patients who shared a four-bed bay with patient zero.

The email suggested two of the latest three positive cases were “likely to be hospital-­acquired” infections but “for the other, the link is unknown”.

Staff described the hospital as “failing” and “outdated”. Picture: AAP

The hospital – which caters to 220,000 people in an area that has failed to see local case numbers fall – was the source of infection in August for a 22-person cluster. Families of five patients who died are understood to be furiously chasing answers on how their loved ones caught the virus.

Labor MP Sophie Cotsis said: “The hospital is bursting at the seams. The staff are amazing but barely coping.” She said the hospital was last upgraded in 1998 and the 150 beds needed to be doubled to cope with the amount of development in the area. Staff have been told not to take leave.