Sydney law firm Clayton Utz evacuated over virus fears
Employees at a Sydney law firm have been evacuated after being told a staffer in the building was linked to a fatal case of coronavirus. It comes as authorities search for 10 medical workers potentially exposed to infected doctors at a medical conference.
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Hundreds of workers from a top tier Sydney law firm have been evacuated over coronavirus fears.
Employees at Clayton Utz in the city’s CBD were ordered to leave on Thursday afternoon after being told a chef in the building was connected to a fatal case of the respiratory illness.
Lawyers were told the chef’s wife is the granddaughter of a 95-year-old woman who died on Tuesday at an aged care facility in Sydney’s northern suburbs after contracting COVID-19.
The couple are being getting tested but all employees were ordered out until Monday.
“I’m not overly concerned,” one Clayton Utz lawyer, who didn’t want to be named, said.
“I think they’re just being abundantly cautious and it’s a case of better safe than sorry.”
One of our people may have indirectly been exposed to COVID-19. As a precaution, we asked our Sydney employees to work from home & cancelled a client event. We expect to hear tonight if the person has, in fact, been exposed. There's no cause for alarm. We'll keep people updated.
— Clayton Utz (@ClaytonUtz) March 5, 2020
The Daily Telegraph understands workers from the Bank of New York and Bloomberg were also heading home.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has offices in the same busy building on Bligh Street.
The news has worried other legal practitioners, with fellow law firm Gilbert and Tobin sending out an alert to its employees.
An internal email asked any worker who‘s had recent meetings with a Clayton Utz employee, or been to their offices, to notify their managers.
It comes after staff at Vodafone’s head office in North Sydney were also told to stop work and head home after an employee recently returned from Japan began showing “flu-like symptoms”.
SEARCH FOR WORKERS POTENTIALLY EXPOSED
Two Sydney doctors infected with coronavirus attended the same medical conference, health authorities have revealed.
A 53-year-old doctor from Ryde Hospital and a female registrar in her twenties from Liverpool Hospital were among 77 medical professionals that attended a radiology seminar on February 18.
“We have had tracing going on … it’s a bit like a police investigation in a sense trying to track who is coming into contact with who and what possible association there may have been,” Health Minister Brad Hazzard said.
Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said that of the 77 attendees plus six speakers, NSW Health had managed to recontact 73 people.
“All are well or previously tested negative and are better — their symptoms have recovered and they haven’t developed another illness,” she said.
“We’re still trying to contact 10 who have not answered multiple calls and messages.”
Dr Chant said she could not confirm at this stage whether all the attendees were from NSW.
Mr Hazzard said that 22 people in NSW have tested positive to COVID-19.
Of those, he said seven “appear to have had on NSW soil transmission”.
“In other words it’s been transmitted from one person to another,” he said.
CHILDREN VISITED AGED CARE HOME
Children will be banned from visiting aged care facilities in the wake of three elderly residents and a worker from Dorothy Henderson Lodge at Macquarie Park being diagnosed with coronavirus.
It also comes after about 17 children from Banksia Childcare Centre visited the facility, which is now in lockdown, on February 24.
Dr Chant said parents will be invited to have their children tested for coronavirus “for the abundance of caution”.
“Will have a clinic later tonight and invite families of children to get assessed,” she said.
She said NSW Health was alerted to an outbreak of illness at the childcare centre after one of the staff members and the employee’s partner developed a respiratory illness.
“Last night we arranged testing of that specimen and … that test has come back negative,” she said.
Dr Chant also confirmed a 50-year-old aged care worker who contracted COVID-19 had not been working the day the children visited.
She said that for the “ultimate prudency” NSW Health will issue advice to aged care facilities that visits of groups of children should be curtailed for now “because of the risk of transmission”.
“We really don’t know the role of children in transmitting COVID-19,” she said.
“We certainly know they’re not being picked up in the numbers and so the question is are they having mild disease but we don’t know their role.”
Mr Hazzard said there was “no indication” currently that the children had either contracted COVID-19 or brought the virus into the aged care centre.
The three residents from Dorothy Henderson Lodge who have been diagnosed are an 82-year-old man, a 70-year-old man and a 95-year-old woman who passed away from the virus.
Dr Chant said there had been “some illness” in the close family contacts of the elderly 95-year-old and that testing is being undertaken.
AGED CARE FACILITY IN LOCKDOWN
It was also revealed that the 70-year-old man from the aged care facility diagnosed with COVID-19 was not in the same area of the lodge as the other two infectees.
Mr Hazzard said it was “challenging” for NSW Health to understand that the man “appears to have no contact with the nursing staff in the lodge”.
“That presents another challenge to try and trace contacts,” he added.
Dr Chant said Dorothy Henderson Lodge is currently in lockdown with patients being forced to eat meals in their rooms to prevent the virus spreading further.
But she warned it was likely that more cases from the facility will be identified.
“I would like to say that it isn’t surprising that we will identify additional cases in that aged care facility and that reflects exposures that have occurred prior to any interventions,” she said.
“We are actively screening and looking for cases and will continue to do so.”
SYDNEY UNI CREATING ISOLATION BLOCK
The University of Sydney is moving students out of a building in its grounds in order to create a 200 bed isolation block in preparation for the return of international students.
“Students will only enter Australia once the government has deemed it is safe to lift the travel restrictions currently in place,” the University said in a statement.
Students returning from coronavirus hotspots such as China or Iran would be required to self-isolate for 14 days.
“If and when the restrictions are lifted, or if one or more of our students comes into contact with a person with coronavirus, we’ll need a safe place for our students that live in University-owned accommodation to self-isolate.”
A letter to students from Mark Try, director of Student Support Services, told them that they would be moved from the Abercrombie Student Accommodation block (ASA) to clear it as an isolation block.
“ASA has self-contained studios which have been recommended by NSW Health as the most suitable accommodation for self-isolation,” he wrote.
The students currently there would be moved to the Queen Mary Building or the Regiment in Camperdown.
The University statement said: “The accommodation is not intended to isolate those who are known to be infected. Anyone who is sick will be treated appropriately as the situation at the time demands. In the current circumstances, that means they would be hospitalised.”
TESTING SET TO EXPAND
Health authorities are looking to extend coronavirus testing to patients who present with mild respiratory illness as they struggle to determine the origins of at least three locally acquired cases.
The move would have huge implications for pathology services which would be inundated with scores of new samples to test.
Medical practitioners on the frontline could soon be encouraged to “think more positively” about the possibility of swabbing a patient who presents with a mild respiratory illness, according to Health Minister Brad Hazzard who believes doctors need to be on higher alert.
“We’ve had four cases of transmission apparently on NSW soil — one we think is likely came from her brother who had travelled from Iran but the other three concerningly health has no capacity to determine at this point what contact they had that actually caused them to get the virus,” he said.
“One staff member in a hospital and one staff member in an aged care facility had symptoms that would be consistent with a respiratory illness or normal virus. The question now is do we have to step up the pathology testing when people present with what might otherwise be considered a normal cold or flu-like symptoms.”
However, Mr Hazzard said this approach would “only be relevant in the current phase” of the coronavirus outbreak.
“As it expands through the community it might become quite impractical to be using pathology services to test a much enlarged population of people who have the novel coronavirus in very mild symptoms,” he added.
AGED CARE RESPONSE
Aged care facilities will meet with health officials tomorrow amid a deepening coronavirus crisis in the sector.
Health Minister Greg Hunt has revealed the sector will be provided with more government advice to help prevent, limit and contain the spread of the virus after a NSW aged care worker brought the disease into a Sydney facility.
“We are meeting with aged care facilities tomorrow in particular but right now we are working on the support with them, the Chief Medical Officer is preparing additional advice today for sharing with aged care facilities,” he said.
It comes after a 95-year-old woman at the Dorothy Henderson Lodge in Macquarie Park, Sydney, was confirmed to have died from the virus.
“There are now four people who have been diagnosed from that home, the aged care worker, the 95-year-old woman who has passed away and two other residents who are in hospital,” Mr Hunt said.
“The isolation and containment measures within the aged care facility are in place and we do know that, on the one hand, the coronavirus is much milder in children than had previously been expected but it is something that has a big impact on those elderly that are affected, which is why we have focusing on our aged care homes as a top priority.”
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard the “much loved” nursing home staff member who became infected had not travelled overseas to any of the coronavirus “hotspot” countries, “which raises the question of how did she end up with the coronavirus”.
The staff member, in her 50s, is in a stable ¬condition in Royal North Shore Hospital. But it was unclear when the woman was tested for the virus after feeling unwell on February 24.
A 52-year-old man who travelled from Sydney to Darwin was last night confirmed as the Northern Territory’s first case.
NEW POWERS
The government announced a two-week self-isolation requirement from all travellers returning from the Middle Eastern country, where 23 members of its parliament were reported infected.
The World Health Organisation has revised the global death rate of the virus to 3.4 per cent.
The escalating crisis prompted federal Health ¬Minister Greg Hunt’s warning that the government “will not hesitate” to exercise Commonwealth powers to enforce self-isolation requirements for travellers returning to Australia from countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.
Reporting by Danielle Le Messurier, Lucy Hughes, Matthew Benns, Adella Beaini, Clare Armstrong