Surgeries cancelled at Brisbane hospitals as flu, COVID fill beds

Surgeries across four hospitals on Brisbane’s northside have been put on hold, as a serious spike in flu and COVID-19 cases fills beds.

Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, The Prince Charles Hospital, Redcliffe Hospital, and Caboolture Hospital have paused category two and three elective surgeries for the next 48 hours to free-up places for emergency patients.

Three hundred hospital beds across the state are already filled with flu and COVID patients, Nine News reported.

The state’s largest hospital, the RBWH, is among those where surgeries have been paused.Credit: Dan Peled

The elective surgery pause will last until at least Friday and affect about 185 patients, many of them in for hip and knee surgery.

A spokesperson for Metro North Health, the Queensland Health arm that operates these hospitals, said affected patients would be contacted directly.

“No patient requiring life-saving clinical care will ever be affected by elective surgery cancellations,” the spokesperson said.

“Emergency surgeries and category one elective surgeries will continue at these hospitals, as well as all categories of elective surgery at the Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service.”

Metro North said it was responding to peak demand, “which generally aligns with winter, when we see more patients presenting to our hospitals and more patients needing hospitalisation for their symptoms”.

According to Nine News, hospitals believe the 48-hour pause should provide enough time to manage the backlog, but a final decision on when to readmit elective patients is yet to be made.

“The government is, of course, telling people it is not too late to be vaccinated against the flu,” the broadcaster said.

“They have been very disappointed because this year the uptake of that vaccine has not been high enough.”

With Rosanna Ryan

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