No blame over outbreak
Health officials not the cause of Townsville’s snap lockdown: report
AN INVESTIGATION into The Prince Charles Hospital’s Covid-19 outbreak that plunged Townsville, Magnetic Island and Palm Island into lockdown has found no wrongdoing by health officials or the unvaccinated worker who unknowingly spread the virus.
However, the Opposition says it has exposed a failure in the system.
Infectious diseases expert Paul Griffin was appointed by the state government last month to lead the review into why a 19-year-old receptionist who worked outside the hospital’s Covid-19 ward was unvaccinated.
The worker contracted the highly contagious Delta variant from a returned traveller being treated in the ward, plunging Greater Brisbane, Townsville and Magnetic Island into a snap three-day lockdown.
Frustrated government ministers and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk pledged an investigation into why the worker was not part of the state’s 1A vaccine rollout for frontline workers.
Dr Griffin’s report revealed the hospital worker had not been required to enter the Covid-19 ward to provide care and had not been required to be vaccinated.
A Queensland Health directive one month earlier stipulated workers providing intermittent care to Covidpositive patients must be vaccinated and regularly tested to protect community health.
“As the concierge was not required to enter and did not enter the Covid-19 ward and did not provide occasional or intermittent care to a Covid-19 positive patient, they were not required by the direction to be vaccinated,” the report found.
Dr Griffin found no evidence of any breach of the public health direction, and said the receptionist at the centre of the outbreak had an appropriate level of understanding of the nature and extent of their role.
The receptionist was stationed about 15m outside the east door of The Prince Charles Hospital’s Covid-19 ward – the main of five entry points into the ward.
She was seated behind a perspex shield and forced to exit the facility during the transfer of Covid-19 patients into the ward.
The receptionist started in the role on May 11 and was advised by health staff that while a Covid-19 vaccination was not mandated, all employees were encouraged to receive the jab.