Coronavirus: use our expertise, say GPs at coalface

Medicos who spent months at the coalface of Melbourne’s coronavirus battle have warned that Victoria’s health department is still not fully utilising their expertis.

‘It‘s the normal state of affairs. Business as usual is bad business’: former AMA president Dr. Mukesh Haikerwal. Picture: Paul Jeffers

Medicos who have spent months at the coalface of Melbourne’s coronavirus battle have warned that Victoria’s health department is still not fully utilising their expertise to rapidly trace and manage cases, as the city prepares to reopen after 3½ months in lockdown.

The comments follow revelations that a cluster of 39 cases in Melbourne’s northern suburbs was sparked by a hospital worker catching the virus from a patient in the COVID ward at Box Hill Hospital, and amid renewed concerns over the adequacy of Department of Health and Human Services messaging to the worker’s family.

Former AMA president Mukesh Haikerwal told The Australian he wasn’t sure how much DHHS had learned from Melbourne’s outbreaks, nine months on from Victoria recording its first case of the virus.

He said the department‘s track and trace team had sought help from GPs in Melbourne’s west last week for help in identifying cases and transmission, but the successful practice didn’t appear to have to have been passed on to recent cases in the city’s north.

“It‘s the normal state of affairs. Business as usual is bad business,” said Dr Haikerwal, who operates a clinic in Altona North, in Melbourne’s west.

He said promised suburban tracing hubs were still not fully operational and the government should use the people who were on the ground. “Who knows where these things are? The point is we just have to be ready and prepared and able to give people messages that are clear, concise and not drowning them with science,” he said.

Joe Garra, a GP in Melbourne’s southwestern coronavirus hotspot of Werribee, said GPs should be notified when a patient of theirs was tested so they could be involved in management of the case. “GPs know the family and the situation of the family,” he said.

“GPs have been let out of the picture for so long despite us saying ‘Let us help’. It’s almost as if (the government) wants to keep it all to themselves.

“People are offering to help but they’re not using us.”

Dr Garra said the Cedar Meats outbreak was the “warning” of what Victoria could expect for future outbreaks and the government should have learned from its bungled handling of the outbreak. “No cluster should get to triple figures. That’s just silly,” he said.

“They’ve got to decentralise. It’s such a big bureaucracy.”

Following revelations the family at the centre of the northern suburbs cluster had received a letter from DHHS stating “As discussed, your family has met (DHHS)’s criteria to end isolation” two days before their child attended school while infectious, state Commander of Testing and Community Engagement Jeroen Weimar said “no such advice was provided in relation to the child” and it was “made clear” to the family in “almost daily discussions” his quarantine period was not over.