‘I never cease to be amazed at how amazing our staff are’
Health correspondent Mark Smith asked Dr Nick Lyons, the medical director at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, what is being done at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital
IN YOUR opinion how did this outbreak, or series of outbreaks, occur in the hospital and when? “Clearly patients have been admitted into the hospital with Covid symptoms, but there are also a lot of patients who are asymptomatic with Covid and may have been admitted for a different reason.
“So it is inevitable, in the same way that Covid is passed from person to person in shops and in the community, that there is a risk it will be passed within the hospital environment.
“So we are now looking at every possible patient that was admitted to the hospital to try and understand whether or not they contracted their infection within the hospital itself.
“So of the patients included in our outbreak, a significant number of those won’t actually have contracted it within the Royal Glamorgan. They will have contracted it somewhere else.
“The work we are now doing is to really understand what that means for us and how therefore we can ensure we deliver care safely and appropriately, support our staff and make sure we minimise – because you can never eradicate – the risk of transmitting Covid within the hospital environment.
“However, it’s still too early to say how many of these current patients contracted the virus within the Royal Glamorgan.”
What practical measures are now being put in place at the hospital to minimise the spread of infection further?
“We have a quite complicated 15-point action plan which is constantly evolving and taking into account what we are learning here and elsewhere.
“That includes re-emphasising the common and important message of social distancing, hand washing, appropriate use of face coverings, but it also includes looking really closely at the way we move patients around the hospital, how we separate patients, making sure all cleaning procedures are correct, right down to the cleaning of meal trolleys, for instance.”
How have staff reacted to this outbreak, the number of deaths and the negative press attention it has caused?
“I never cease to be amazed by how amazing our staff are.
“They’ve had a tough period with Covid. Many of them haven’t been able to have the holidays that they would have liked, or had a rest with their families. And now they are facing this incredibly difficult working environment.
“I think some of them are feeling quite demoralised, stressed and I suppose sad is the right word. In addition to everything that’s going on, they are now faced with this outbreak. But I couldn’t be more confident that this staff group will respond to this and do the right thing not only for each other but for their patients.”
Have any members of staff at the Royal Glamorgan tested positive for coronavirus?
“We are currently increasing our staff testing and, as a result of that, we are now identifying staff – often who are asymptomatic – who have tested positive with Covid. But that’s part of our normal way of supporting our staff and dealing with what’s quite a challenging situation.”
What happens when a member of staff tests positive for coronavirus, and what happens to the staff who are identified as a close contact?
“The rules are the rules. In exactly the same way as any of us has a responsibility to self-isolate and to protect each other, that applies to our staff as well.
“However, there is a slight difference in the guidance to recognise staff working in high-risk environments because they are wearing PPE.
“So if they were treating a Covid patient, or next to a fellow member of staff, and were less than one metre distance from them, but had PPE, obviously they wouldn’t need to selfisolate.”
Has the reduction of services at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital had a knock-on effect?
“It has put pressure on the other two main sites – the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend and Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil – because of the increased flow of emergency patients and patients needing admission.
“The dedication of staff across the whole health board rising to that challenge is quite humbling.”
What’s your message to the families of people who have died after potentially contracting Covid within a Cwm Taf hospital?
“I would want to express my condolences, both personally and on behalf of the health board, to those families where their loved ones have been lost in association with this outbreak.”