Theatre nurse breached quarantine with hospital return
An operating theatre nurse working at a private hospital breached government quarantine restrictions when she returned to Edinburgh from holiday in Bulgaria and arrived at work the following Monday.
The theatre nurse – who this newspaper is choosing not to name – returned from a holiday in Bulgaria on Saturday 29 August and was due to work in the private Spire Murrayfield hospital on Monday.
Bulgaria, which has a population of around seven million, is seeing around 100 cases of Covid-19 on average per day and has been on the mandatory quarantine list since July.
Overall it has seen around 16,500 cases and 642 deaths from the coronavirus, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
It is understood she breached quarantine restrictions requiring her to self-isolate for 14 days and arrived at work for her shift, before being screened at the entrance to the hospital.
She then had her temperature checked before spending around 20 to 30 minutes in the hospital.
Staff then discovered she was required to self-isolate
and asked the nurse to leave and return home. The nurse did not come into contact with any patients.
One staff member said: “Everyone knew she had just returned from her threeweek holiday in Bulgaria. I felt extremely anxious and fearful for patient safety. I was also scared for my own health and safety as well as my family’s.”
The breach has led opposition politicians to raise concerns around the effectiveness of the current quarantine enforcement procedures with the Scottish Conservatives saying the incident reveals “troubling weaknesses” in Test and Protect.
Humza Yousaf, the justice secretary, has come under rising pressure to more stringently enforce quarantine through higher numbers of travellers being contacted by
Test and Protect. This week, the Scottish Government announced a further £1 million towards recruiting 25 more contact tracers at the National Contact Tracing Centre dedicated to checking quarantine restrictions are being followed after recruitment was labelled “woeful” by Scottish Labour.
Donald Cameron, the Scottish Conservative health spokesperson, said: “Quarantine rules must be followed by everyone, especially those working on the frontline in our hospitals.
“It is good news that staff realised the mistake quickly and nobody appears to have been infected, but that’s no excuse for putting people at risk.
“It also reveal troubling weaknesses in the SNP government’s Test and Protect system, given that it was quite clear this nurse should have been quarantining.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “It is the responsibility of the individual who is travelling to check the regulations and to abide by quarantine if they are travelling from a country covered by the regulations.
“Failure to self-isolate where required poses a significant risk to wider public health.”