Chief Executive COVID-19 Update: 25 October

• 164 COVID-19 positive inpatients
• 18 employees with COVID-19
• 59 employees in precautionary quarantine

PPE update

As COVID-19 testing has expanded to test all patients in our care, aprons are no longer required PPE for every employee working in patient-facing areas. Aprons are part of the standard precautions PPE which requires the use of gowns and gloves when anticipating contact with body fluids, or when prolonged physical contact is anticipated.

Please ensure you choose the appropriate level of PPE for the situation.

Further detail about which PPE to use in different working situations is outlined in our PPE Compulsory Standards.

Changes to employee furlough requirements

With the significant increase in vaccination rates and the ongoing use of PPE and surveillance testing, some changes to contact tracing and the furloughing of employees have been made.

For internal contact tracing amongst double vaccinated employees, there will now be two categories:

• Low risk – employees able to continue/return to work, with surveillance testing in place for a week after last exposure.
• High risk – employees will be furloughed for seven days and able to return to work after receiving a negative test result on day six.

Employees who are yet to be fully vaccinated will be required to isolate for 14 days.

Employees with children at school who are deemed primary close contacts, can return to work if:

• The employee’s child returns a negative test result.
• The employee is double vaccinated and asymptomatic.
• The employee undertakes surveillance testing for two weeks.

Employee surveillance testing update

Further details about the employee surveillance testing process and testing locations can be found on the Employee Surveillance Testing update on the intranet.

Thank you for your continued hard work, flexibility, and commitment to protecting our community.

Andrew Stripp
Chief Executive