Doctor’s emergency call: Gold Coast border clinic may be forced to close because of NSW staff
A doctor has pleaded with a Gold Coast MP for help after revealing their border clinic will shut down due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Gold Coast
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A DOCTOR has asked a Gold Coast MP to “please help” after their border clinic will be forced shut due to COVID-19 restrictions shutting out staff.
The Bulletin had previously revealed the doctor, staffing the only COVID-19 testing station south of Palm Beach, had been denied entry to Queensland.
In an email to Mudgeeraba MP Ros Bates, the doctor wrote: “Please Help! (sic). Now The CHO (chief health officer) is saying the border will shut completely. All our reception staff live in NSW.
“We would have to close the surgery. Who would look after the pandemic patients then? How would the health of Queensland be enhanced? We’re already one doctor down but Queensland police are allowed in from anywhere. Schoolchildren would have to change schools. Has the Queensland Education Department prepared for new enrolments on mass.”
The doctor asked if anyone in the Government had any business sense and was not panicking about coronavirus.
Outside the Parliament today, Ms Bates told The Bulletin: “Labor’s border confusion has reached a new low when a local surgery could be forced to close its doors because doctors and nurses are locked out.
“We are in a world pandemic and the last thing we need is the Palaszczuk Labor Government refusing entry to work for local health staff.
“Annastacia Palaszczuk must prioritise our hard working health professionals on the border, so Queenslanders can get the best possible care.”
But Ms Palaszczuk during Question Time reminded Opposition MPs that they had “called for the borders to be opened 64 times”.
“There would have been no border pass. There would have been no checks,” the Premier said.
“It would have been open season for all. Anybody would have been allowed in here without checks or balances.”
Ms Palaszczuk accused Ms Bates of being “reckless”.
In a speech earlier in the Parliament, Ms Bates said the southern surgery case showed the inconsistencies in the government’s policy.
“So while celebrities and fake diplomats get exemptions and get to jump the queue, dodging mandatory quarantine requirements for incoming travellers coming from COVID
hot spots — everyone else is supposed to do the right thing,” she said.
“There needs to be some common sense applied, especially for essential workers such as our doctors, nurses and paramedics. Surely a GP who runs a fever clinic is an essential worker in the middle of a global health pandemic.
“All of this makes a mockery of the whole process and shows the inconsistencies in the approach of the Palaszczuk Labor Government.
“GPs who run fever clinics on the southern Gold Coast have trouble getting into Queensland and yet teenage girls — in Noosa and Logan can expose major flaws in the border bubble,
while exemptions are granted to fake diplomats and celebrities.”
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