Coronavirus: Sydney aged care worker passed virus to resident
An 82-year-old man has tested positive to coronavirus at the same Sydney aged care home where a nurse fell sick nine days ago.
An 82-year-old man has tested positive to coronavirus at the same northwest Sydney aged care home where a nurse fell sick nine days ago.
The resident of the Macquarie Park facility is being cared for in hospital.
The latest case brings the total number of COVID-19 cases in NSW to 16.
It comes after a 95-year-old woman who was being cared for by the same infected nurse died overnight.
It is unknown whether the nursing home resident passed away from coronavirus but NSW health authorities are awaiting test results.
“We express our deepest sympathies to her family and are expecting test results later tonight to confirm whether this lady’s death is linked to COVID-19,” NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said in a statement.
“The public will be updated as soon as we have test results and her next of kin are notified,” she said.
Dr Chant said the aged care worker had been a staff member at the Macquarie Park Baptistcare for more than two decades.
The aged care worker was the third-locally acquired case of coronavirus in Australia, raising fears that elderly residents may have been infected.
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The worker, aged in her 50s, was an employee of the Dorothy Henderson Lodge aged care facility at Macquarie Park near Macquarie University. It is particularly alarming given the majority of deaths worldwide from the virus are among elderly people.
However, NSW health authorities have not placed the nursing home in lock down.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the aged care worker was a “much loved’’ and long term member of the nursing home’s staff who had been in close contact with 13 residents, 11 of who have been placed in isolation. The other two elderly residents presented with respiratory symptoms with one, the 95-year-old woman, passing away. The other unwell resident — and 82 year-old -man is currently being tested for coronavirus in hospital.
Mr Hazzard told NSW Parliament during Question Time the man was suspected of contracting the virus but results were pending. “Hopefully I’ll be able to report to the house in due course,” he said.
The aged care worker has been quarantined at Royal North Shore Hospital and is in a stable condition.
Mr Hazzard said the woman had worked at the facility, part of the BaptistCare group, for more than 20 years and began to get symptoms of the virus on February 24.
Further checks on patients in two other facilities at the site have shown no further signs of the virus.
Mr Hazzard said the staff member had not been overseas, raising the question of how she ended up with the virus. “She was working on around about 24 February when she started to get those symptoms — the sort of symptoms that we’re all very familiar with, with flu,” Mr Hazzard said. “And so we did the checks. And, of course, we’re aware that it’s likely that she could have been capable of passing on the coronavirus from at least the day before, 24 hours, so that’s 23 February.”
Appearing before Senate estimates in Canberra on Wednesday morning, the Chief Medical Officer Dr Brendan Murphy, said there were significant concerns about aged care, and health officials were holding a “large planning day” with the sector later this week.
AMA president Tony Bartone also said the latest incident of human-to-human transmission was of grave concern given the aged care staff member worked in proximity to the most vulnerable members of the community.
“It is a significant issue that a healthcare worker, who has been working in an aged-care facility, has tested positive for the virus,” Dr Bartone told The Australian. “Unfortunately, that now has major implications for all healthcare workers at that facility — and who are the frontline when it comes to caring for the elderly — and also for the residents.
“These residents are very vulnerable: they are elderly, many already have complex underlying conditions, and this disease is particularly devastating in those circumstances.”
Dr Bartone said it was crucial the wider community observed a number of simple health precautions if the spread of the pathogen was to be limited. “It’s not a time to panic — but it is an important reminder of the need to self-isolate if you develop symptoms, maintain correct hand-wash hygiene, and observe proper cough etiquette,” he said.
“Being told to self-isolate means exactly that. It means to isolate yourself immediately — not go on a detour of the local supermarket or foodstore first – but to isolate yourself straightaway.”
Doctor may have infected patients
Health authorities are struggling to track possible coronavirus victims amid fears that an infected doctor, who worked at Ryde Hospital and who is now under quarantine, may have spread COVID-19 to his patients.
The virus outbreak in Australia escalated overnight, with the total number of cases in NSW rising to 15. Since the weekend the number of cases in NSW have risen by 11.
In a statement, NSW Health said a woman in her 50s had not travelled outside of Australia recently and “is believed to have acquired the illness locally”. It is not known if the woman had links to Ryde Hospital or the infected doctor.
A man in his 30s has also tested positive for COVID-19 after returning from Malaysia on March 1. He flew from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney on Malindo Air flight OD171 — seated in row 15 — with efforts now being made to contact his fellow passengers.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant confirmed 40 Ryde Hospital medical staff had been ordered to isolate themselves for 14 days and were investigating how the 53-year-old contracted the virus. The isolated staff include 13 doctors, 23 nurses and four other health workers.
The Australian understands the doctor treated patients after developing symptoms and there was confusion over whether he had contracted COVID-19.
“We still don’t know how he acquired the infection,’’ Dr Chant said. “We are doing an investigation as we speak. He did not care for any of our positive cases but we are doing some additional investigations into what patients he saw, to see whether there were any undiagnosed cases.”
Dr Chant said the doctor had come into contact with a “large number of patients”, who NSW Health was contacting to inform of their potential exposure to coronavirus.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned the number of cases is likely to go up in the next few days. “What is scary on this situation is that the vaccine is not yet developed but we ask everybody to stay calm, to go about business and to stay updated the NSW health website is giving our citizens in NSW timely information,” she told Nine’s Today Show on Wednesday.
The total number of coronavirus cases in Australia has risen to 41, with more people undergoing tests, including a passenger who landed at Victoria’s Avalon Airport.
Victoria has confirmed its 10th case of coronavirus after a man, aged in his 30s, recently returned from Iran. Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikaos said the is almost symptom-free and is self-isolating at home. A formal announcement from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services regarding the man’s case will be made soon.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said 75 countries and regions had virus outbreaks, including the first cases reported in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Portugal.
Across the globe, more than 90,000 coronavirus cases and 3100 fatalities have been confirmed, including the death of West Australian James Kwan.
The scare for NSW Health staff and patients came amid a clash between state and federal authorities over “tracing” measures, which have been set up to track down people who have come into contact with coronavirus patients.
Dr Chant said authorities were still waiting for the Australian Border Force to provide passenger cards of people who sat near a woman diagnosed with COVID-19 who flew into Sydney on February 23 aboard Qatar Airways flight QR908 from Iran.
NSW Health authorities are trying to track people sitting next to the woman and in adjacent rows, and have been waiting more than 48 hours for the ABF to supply the contact details of the fellow passengers.
Dr Chant said the process needed to be “streamlined”. The federal government said there were no delays in providing health authorities with incoming passenger cards.
The West Australian government said it had moved from containment and isolation policies to preparing for a COVID-19 outbreak. In an escalation of public health safety measures, Premier Mark McGowan has banned overseas travel for all public servants, school teachers, students and government ministers.
As part of the response, WA hospitals will implement “fever clinics” within weeks to expand capacity to assess people with respiratory complaints.
WA Health Minister Roger Cook, who is heading the state’s pandemic plan, said it was a case of “when, not if” the virus would progress towards person-to-person transmission in that state, as had occurred in NSW.
In Queensland, health authorities launched a tracing investigation to find people who had come into contact with a University of Queensland student from China who tested positive to COVID-19. The 20-year-old had self-quarantined in Dubai before arriving in Brisbane on February 23.
A day after Mr Hazzard warned people against handshakes and kissing, Dr Murphy said only those with symptoms or who had recently returned from high-risk countries should “practise some social distancing”.
Attorney-General Christian Porter earlier said the nation’s tough biosecurity control orders would be used to combat the coronavirus spread. The government has the power to set up human health “response zones”, banning people from attending places of mass gathering such as schools and shopping centres.
Mr Porter said the laws were already used in a “limited and narrow” way at border points, if incoming travellers were suspected of being sick.
“For the first time really at a mass level in Australia, people might be required to give me information about who they’ve come in contact with at certain points in time,” Mr Porter said.
The states and commonwealth have mirror legislation that gives authorities the power to compel people who had coronavirus to detail their movements and those who they may have had contact.
The government said most of the patients and those infected had been co-operative but highlighted the fact anyone could be subjected to the Biosecurity Act and forced to disclose information.
Mr Hunt told The Australian the exclusion laws had already been used by the federal government and were imposed on territories outside Australia, including Wuhan and the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan.
State health authorities are using flight manifests, medical records and other measures to track people.
Additional reporting: Lachlan Moffet Gray, Richard Ferguson, Victoria Laurie, Natasha Robinson
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