Gold Coast nurse Topaz Stringfellow volunteers to help with vaccination program in outback Queensland

A Gold Coast nurse who contracted Covid-19 after volunteering to work in Victoria during the height of its outbreak has put her hand up again for another lifesaving mission. READ HER REMARKABLE STORY >>>

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A GOLD Coast nurse who contracted Covid-19 after volunteering to work in Victoria during the height of its outbreak has put her hand up again for another lifesaving mission.

Topaz Stringfellow travelled to Melbourne with fellow volunteer nurse Rachel Galuzen-Meakin in July last year as cases began to explode.

Just a month later she was back at Gold Coast University Hospital as a patient, having fallen ill herself.

Gold Coast registered nurse, Topaz Stringfellow, at Gold Coast University Hospital. Picture Glenn Hampson.

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“I thought that ‘if I get unwell, I’m female, I’m young, I’m otherwise healthy, if I do get sick I’ll just be mildly unwell if not no symptoms at all’,” she said.

“So it was a shock, you just always think that it won’t happen to you.”

Like other Covid sufferers, Ms Stringfellow said she was floored by the disease.

“Even walking to the bathroom I had to stop and catch my breath,” she said. “Just doing simple little things in an isolation room. And that probably lasted about 13 days.”

After recovering, Ms Stringfellow returned to work on the Gold Coast.

But with her expertise in high demand, she was soon on her way again, this time volunteering to help set up the vaccination program in outback Queensland where she is now Acting Clinical Nurse Consultant in infection control.

“At that point in time there weren’t a lot of people who had completed that quite comprehensive management training,” she said.

“I had a call from one of the directors of nursing out here who said they were looking at making a rapid response vaccination program and they were looking for people who would be happy to respond at short notice to help.

“So I said ‘yes’ because it was an adventure. I got a call about 24 hours later, ‘can you get on a plane tomorrow’, which I did.”

The importance of the program was highlighted last Friday, when it was revealed a Qantas flight attendant infected with the feared Delta variant had worked on a flight to Longreach.

Ms Stringfellow said people take the threat of Covid seriously and get vaccinated as soon as they become eligible.

“I saw first-hand the effects of Covid at its worst in Melbourne,” she said.

Topaz Stringfellow pictured on her way to Melbourne in July last year. Picture: David Clark.

“Within myself and my colleagues, in nursing homes that had been riddled with Covid or the public housing towers that went into lockdown.

“Covid is very real. It doesn’t discriminate. It affects young, it affects old.”

Ms Stringfellow said her own experience also demonstrated the value of wearing masks. In Melbourne she worked closely with fellow volunteer Ms Galuzen-Meakin, with the pair travelling together in a single car to testing sites. Yet Ms Galuzen-Meakin escaped infection.

“I really believe in Melbourne the reason I didn’t infect my colleague Rachel, was because, publicly and privately, we wore face masks,” she said.

“We didn’t socialise when we were in lockdown, we only went to work together.”

Images from Sydney, where Covid-19 is once again resurgent, last week showed young people congregating without wearing masks or social distancing.

Having suffered from Covid herself as an otherwise healthy 26-year-old, Ms Stringfellow warned that it was a mistake for young people to believe they wouldn’t become seriously ill from the disease.

“There’s some young people ventilated in NSW at the moment and they probably thought, just like me, that they wouldn’t be in a situation that if they got Covid they would get that sick,” she said. “But it really does affect them as well.

“And young people are at the moment driving infection rates around the world.

“So we really do need to have a role to play in recognising that we can get sick and we are responsible for our actions and how they can affect other people as well.

“If you haven’t seen the impacts of the virus it is difficult to understand why these (public health) measures are important.

“But I would really encourage people to check their vaccinations status so when they’re eligible to roll up their sleeves they receive it.”

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