Life and death battle inside Newmarch House nursing home
Three weeks after a healthcare worker tested positive to COVID-19 at an aged care facility in western Sydney, the death toll has risen to 14. Now Anglicare’s Newmarch House is facing claims the spread could be linked to staff not wearing surgical gowns, masks and gloves properly.
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When Rose Davies settled into Lawson wing inside Anglicare’s Newmarch House, one of the features she loved most was the garden outside her window.
It was often where the 84-year-old sat in the sunshine when her daughter Liz Lane visited the Caddens home, near Penrith in Sydney’s west.
Now the mother and daughter sit 2m apart from one another, separated by cyclone fencing and accompanied by a nurse dressed in full personal protection equipment (PPE) for the duration of their strictly-30 minute catch up.
“The temptation that you would reach through the fence to touch your family member was too great so that’s why they did it I guess,” Ms Lane told The Sunday Telegraph.
“At least today I know she has been washed, changed and wheeled out for some fresh sunshine.”
These are the extreme measures the aged care facility at the centre of one of Australia’s worst COVID-19 clusters has taken to stop the spread of a virus that has already killed 14 residents.
The 14th death was confirmed on Sunday by Anglicare.
Twenty-four staff members have tested positive to COVID-19 since a healthcare worker with mild symptoms went to work for five shifts over eight days before testing positive on April 11.
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As of Saturday, 61 cases, including 37 residents, have been linked to Newmarch House, despite state and federal governments throwing infection control resources at the facility.
Anglicare suggests even the most recent cases – including two staff members who tested positive on Friday – may reflect historical transmissions.
But health experts have put forward a new possibility – that staff on site since the outbreak began haven’t used PPE properly.
Family members, aged care staff and health authorities have provided an insight into how staff pressures, poor communication, allegations of neglect and potentially critical missteps might have contributed to the challenge to contain the swelling coronavirus spread.
On April 15, four days after the virus was discovered inside Newmarch House, the facility sent an email to the families of residents.
It confirmed nine residents had tested positive while 88 were negative and would be retested in three days.
Anthony Bowe, whose 76-year-old mother Pat Shea lived in room 32, sighed with relief.
“I was at work one minute thinking we dodged a bullet,” he said.
The next day, a staff member called him and corrected the record – his mother had actually tested positive.
“I spent 10 minutes arguing about the wording of the email and the fact they’d made an error rather than talking about my mother,” Mr Bowe said.
In the first week of the outbreak, Mr Bowe said his mother mentioned a nurse coming into her room without gloves on.
“I asked her if she touched anything and mum said the nurse handed her a copy of an email from [Newmarch House],” he said.
On Friday, as another two staff members tested positive to COVID-19, NSW Health sent senior infection control experts into Newmarch House to see why fresh cases were still emerging.
They found some staff may have not applied or taken off PPE properly, raising questions about the training of those nurses called in to help since the outbreak.
“There have been some elements where consistent application of infectious control practice has not occurred,” NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant said on Saturday.
The process of “donning and doffing” PPE must be followed methodically to ensure hands aren’t contaminated.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard also made it clear on Saturday he had told Anglicare to step up its game in communicating with family members following their sustained outcry.
An Anglicare Sydney spokesperson said one email a day was sent to families of Newmarch House residents.
“Our residents have chosen someone within their family to be the family’s representative with Anglicare and we are in contact with that person,” they said.
“And for every one of our residents who is sadly COVID-19 positive, we have been in regular phone contact with that resident’s chosen representative.”
They said the core issue at Newmarch House was “the virus appears to be extremely infectious” and while Anglicare was learning more each day, the end of this might be weeks away.
Ms Lane said she repeatedly called the nurse’s station and emailed Anglicare for days after the outbreak until Federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck intervened.
She claimed at one point, the nurses station phone line was disconnected and a mobile phone provided to her mother, who has dementia, wasn’t connected.
Each time her mum called from a nurse’s mobile phone, Ms Lane saved the number.
She now rings those numbers on rotation, sometimes reaching nurses on their day off, in a bid to get through to someone who can update her on Ms Davies’ well being.
Shirley Yates, 89, had been in Newmarch House receiving respite care for four weeks.
As coronavirus cases began to multiply around the world, her family decided to extend for another two weeks, figuring she might be safer inside an aged care facility.
Ms Yates died last Monday after testing positive to COVID-19 nine days earlier.
Anglicare assured one of her family members that they’d be in touch regarding Ms Yates’ property but as of Friday, it had been three days without a call.
Meanwhile, the family of another 89-year-old who was battling COVID-19, Blanche Billinghurst, thought it was their relative who died.
They learned of the death on the news on the morning of April 28 and feared the worst.
Son Paul Billinghurst said his brother called Newmarch House to ask if it was Ms Billinghurst who had died and confusion set in.
“The person he contacted that morning wouldn’t give him a direct answer,” he said.
“He wouldn’t just walk down the hall to her room and check if she was still there. We were contemplating calling the police to do a welfare check.”
For two hours, the family was distraught with uncertainty. Mr Billinghurst’s wife even emailed a TV reporter to check if he knew who it was.
It wasn’t Ms Billinghurst. But that afternoon, she succumbed to COVID-19 too.
Last week, Anglicare admitted it had been under extreme pressure and the criticism about communication was to an extent true.
Before its outbreak had even began, it was in contact with Baptist Care, which operated aged care facility Dorothy Henderson Lodge, where the virus had claimed six lives in March.
Anglicare wanted to prepare for an outbreak of its own but the Newmarch House spread would turn out to be much worse.
The facility has been plagued by staffing issues with more than 60 workers forced on leave over the past three weeks after either coming down with COVID-19 or being in close contact with someone who did.
Some staff members didn’t turn up at all, putting further pressure on the exhausted nurses and support workers left.
One aged care nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said some colleagues were scared to return work given how the outbreak had been handled.
Some staff were now working 12-hour shifts, the nurse said, which would add to fatigue, especially with time consuming changing of PPE.
“Mistakes can be made when you work for too long,” the nurse said.
“I’m disappointed that things have gotten so bad at the facility and wish more had been done to protect staff and residents.
“Even when I’m better, I’ll be scared to go back.”
Another nurse said Anglicare had not been in contact with staff who had tested positive to COVID-19.
“When I talk to other staff there is lots of fear,” the nurse said.
“They don’t get any contact from work. We don’t know if we’ll be safe at work.”
In a statement, Anglicare Sydney said Newmarch House had very good staffing arrangements, especially after the government assistance.
“The staff are under extreme pressure, not just because of the workload, but because of the emotional toll of what is happening daily around them and the risks they are taking,” a spokesperson said.
Some relatives claim the focus on looking after the COVID-19 residents meant the standard of care for other residents dropped.
The worst neglect claims included one woman who was left for more than an hour after falling over, another resident who had to call a family member to get out of the bathroom because her assistance bell was ignored and delayed meal times for a diabetic resident.