Revealed: 15 coronavirus deaths from three sources

Cruise ships, an aged-care facility and a hospital cancer ward are linked to three-quarters of all Covid-19 deaths in Australia.

Passengers aboard the Ruby Princess cruise ship sitting off coast of Sydney on Wednesday.

Three-quarters of all deaths in Australia resulting from the corona­virus pandemic are linked to just three sources of infection — the Ruby Princess and three other returning cruise ships, an aged-care facility and the cancer treatment ward of a major metropolitan public hospital.

As the national death toll reached 21 on Wednesday, it emerged that eight of the dead had recently been on a cruise.

A further five were residents of the Dorothy Henderson Lodge aged-care facility at Macquarie Park in Sydney’s northwest, and two were patients in the oncology and ­haematology ward of Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital.

The infection source for six other deaths out of the total in Australia so far remains unclear.

Health authorities have been ­reluctant to release information about their identities, how they might have become infected and whether they came into contact with others. However, they appear to be standing by analysis indicating most of the nation’s confirmed cases, and deaths, are connected to overseas travel.

With quarantining of all returned overseas travellers in force, state border closures and strict ­social-distancing rules, the hope is to limit transmission in the wider community as much as possible.

The latest death was that of an elderly person admitted to Orange Base Hospital in western NSW. Details were not disclosed at the request of the family.

The number of recorded coronavirus infections in Australia late on Wednesday was 4862, with NSW accounting for the biggest proportion at 2182, followed by Victoria at 968, Queensland 781, Western Australia 392, South Australia 367, Tasmania 69, ACT 84 and the Northern Territory 19.

A total of 345 of those infected have recovered.

The Ruby Princess accounts for the equal biggest number of COVID-19 fatalities, with five of its passengers having died since the ship docked in Sydney more than two weeks ago. Hundreds of passengers later tested positive, and a blame game is continuing between Border Force and the NSW Health Department over how all could have been permitted to leave the ship and return home locally and interstate without checks.

Of the other three cruise-­related deaths, the first was that of 78-year-old James Kwan, who died at a Perth hospital after returning to Australia from the ­coronavirus-rife Diamond Princess in Japan.

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Garry Kirstenfeldt, 68, died in a Toowoomba hospital on March 25, after he disembarked the Voyager of the Seas in Sydney and returned home to Queensland.

Ray Daniels, 73, died in Perth’s Joondalup Hospital after a cruise aboard the Celebrity ­Solstice.

The death toll at the Baptist Care-run Dorothy Henderson Lodge stands at five, with the latest fatality on Tuesday a 95-year-old woman.

The NSW Health Department has not released results of an investigation into how so many residents at there could have been infected, but it says several staff have tested positive.

The only other way for the virus to have spread to the ­facility is through visitors.

At the Alfred Hospital, two unnamed men in their 70s died on the same day, March 25, as in-patients receiving treatment in the haematology and oncology ward.

Victorian health authorities have confirmed two other patients and some staff had tested positive at the hospital, but released no further details. Another man died at a Victorian hospital the next day. A fourth Victorian in his 80s with COVID-19 died at an unspecified hospital in the state on March 28.

Health authorities in NSW and Victoria have faced media questions about their reluctance to ­release specific information about the spread of infection in some hospitals and other institutions, ­although most debate has focused on the decision to allow passengers to leave the Ruby Princess.

 

Of the 21 deaths reported by late on Wednesday, all were older people, aged between 68 and 95, and most were aged in their 80s or 90s who appeared to have had underlying health conditions.

Raina Macintyre, head of biosecurity at the University of NSW, said past experience of the SARS virus showed death rates lagged behind cases that would ­result in fatalities, because sufferers tended to be in hospital several weeks before dying.

As the number of reported cases climbed, the number of deaths would inevitably, and there was more likelihood with high numbers of reported infections that younger people and children could be among them.

Professor Macintyre said Australia’s ability to stem the death rate from coronavirus ­depended on the number of hospital intensive care beds and ventilators for COVID-19 patients who needed mechanical assistance to keep breathing.

She said a key factor in the ­severity of coronavirus and higher risk of death was the “dose load” or “dose intensity” sufferers ­received. Passenger ships posed a greater danger with the potentially higher doses of COVID-19 because they were closed environments.

State health officials defended their release of information about the spread of coronavirus, saying they believed their record of transparency was sound considering a need to respect the privacy of ­patients and balance “media ­requests and the public’s right to know”.