Push to inoculate medical students against Covid-19
The AMA has called for an urgent push to vaccinate all frontline health staff for Covid-19 after a medical student was caught up in Brisbane’s widening schools outbreak.
The Australian Medical Association has called for an urgent push to vaccinate all frontline health staff for Covid-19 after a medical student was caught up in Brisbane’s widening schools outbreak.
The young woman tutored a 17-year-old high school student who was the first to test positive last week when the virus jumped from two returned international travellers to the community.
Queensland’s chief health officer, Jeannette Young, said that after originally being identified as the likely index patient of the community transmission, it was found that the student, from the University of Queensland, had in fact been infected by the teenager.
This eased concerns that the medical student had been exposed to the virus while on hospital placement in a re-run of the infection control breaches behind previous outbreaks in Brisbane.
But Queensland Health was unable to say how many medical and nursing students were on placement to hospitals, and what proportion of them had been vaccinated for Covid-19.
AMA Queensland president Chris Perry said medical students had to be a priority. “Queensland Health must continue to vaccinate all frontline health workers as a matter of urgency but also move quickly to vaccinate all hospital staff,” he said.
“Universities and Queensland Health should ensure medical students on hospital placements are vaccinated against Covid-19 to safeguard the health and safety of both students and patients.”
Dr Young has suspended medical student placements for a week in a move backed by the AMA.
Queensland Health said 25 per cent of its workforce remained unvaccinated, though it added some of these may have accessed the jab independently. About 65 per cent of its workforce – nearly 75,000 people – had received two doses of the vaccine.
It did not provide a breakdown of how many were in frontline medical or nursing roles.
Dr Young said contact tracers had still not established the “missing link” in the infection chain between the two men who landed in Brisbane on June 29 via Singapore – one travelling from the UK, the other from Indonesia – and the Indooroopilly High School student.
All 31 cases so far identified were clustered around the two returned travellers, genomic testing had revealed.
“The 17-year-old was the first person in the household who we tested positive,” Dr Young said.
“So now I am very confident that the medical student did not take the virus into that household with five people in it, where the 17-year-old was.
“One of that household gave it to the medical student. So I don’t know where the missing link is.”
Dr Young said more than 10,000 people were in hospital or home quarantine after a sixth school was closed due to the latest outbreak.
A karate club run at the Ironside State School in St Lucia was linked to one of the 13 new cases that emerged on Monday.
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