COVID19 Australia: Fear and anxiety over virus as cases rise across Sydney suburbs
Macquarie Park and Ryde became the city’s coronavirus “ground zero’’ on Wednesday with residents on high alert following Australia’s second confirmed death and a further positive diagnosis of two medical professionals, two nursing home residents and a university lecturer.
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Macquarie Park and Ryde became the city’s coronavirus “ground zero’’ on Wednesday with residents on high alert following Australia’s second confirmed death and a further positive diagnosis of two medical professionals, two nursing home residents and a university lecturer.
Last night NSW Health confirmed a 95-year-old woman who lived at BaptistCare’s Dorothy Henderson Lodge Aged Care Centre had died after contracting the virus. A 50-year-old female worker, who had been caring for the woman at the centre, contracted the virus and started showing symptoms on February 24.
Last night two residents, an 82-year-old man and woman in her 70s, were also diagnosed with coronavirus.
It follows the positive coronavirus diagnosis of a 53-year-old male doctor from Ryde Hospital on Monday.
Neither of the two health care workers had travelled overseas and it is not known where they contracted the virus. On Wednesday, Macquarie University confirmed a lecturer had been diagnosed with coronavirus following a trip to Iran but the person had not attended work while ill.
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One of the university’s students, Ella Thompson, 18, said she was taking extra precautions as a result of the two confirmed cases.
“It is scary because I have heard you can spread it before you know you’re sick,” she said. “Especially because there are so many people at the university.”
Ms Thompson said two students quickly left a lecture on Tuesday after her professor welcomed some Japanese exchange students into the room.
“There were two people who got up and left,” she said.
“I feel mean being like ‘no, I don’t want to be around people who have been in those areas’ but then again I don’t want to get the coronavirus.”
Fellow student Caleb Paisley, 19, said he was trying to restrict the number of people he made contact with.
Macquarie Park mum Katie Cassar (right with son Ziggy) said she had seen people stockpiling water at local supermarkets.
“I understand that it would worry a lot of people, especially people who are immune compromised like the elderly,” she said.