‘Situation is dramatic’: Hospitals struggling with outbreak

A Melbourne doctor has once again called for more personal protective equipment to be made available to healthcare workers, saying the situation is “quite dramatic”.

A Melbourne doctor has once again called for more personal protective equipment to be made available to healthcare workers, saying the situation is “quite dramatic”.

Two weeks ago, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal expressed his concerns over the number of healthcare workers being infected with COVID-19 and claimed some staff members had to rely on charity for face masks.

Dr Haikerwal spoke to Nine’s Today show on Monday, saying he is still seeing the same problems in medical settings.

“Unfortunately, we’re still having to push and push hard to see any sort of change. We are hoping to see some movement from the state health department people today to increase the level of supply of protective care for our patients and for our frontline workers looking after patients,” he told the program.

“We need to be sure that the WorkCover system actually works for our healthcare workers if they get in that situation. The situation is really quite dramatic.”

Dr Haikerwal said it was important the Victorian government “gets it right” or there could be a risk of the same situation being repeated.

Behind the Scenes at the Royal Melbourne Hospital ICU. Picture: David Caird

He said it was extremely important that the state kept a high rate of testing, as well as providing adequate protection for healthcare workers.

“We’ve seen some reduction in numbers. But we are still in triple figures. Also we’ve seen the death rate increase over 400. Which is not a good number to be seeing,” Dr Haikerwal said.

“The issue really needs to be that we keep doing the testing to make sure we see what the level of infections are out there in the community.

“We need to make sure we keep our healthcare workers protected. We need to write accurate numbers of who is actually being infected at work.

Behind the Scenes at the Royal Melbourne Hospital ICU ward. Picture: David Caird

“We’ve seen outbreaks in hospitals around the city. And this is really quite a disturbing figure. We need to make sure that these people are protected.”