Queensland case raises questions about PPE for healthcare workers
The case of a Brisbane hospital doctor who became infected while treating COVID patients should have been entirely preventable with the proper personal protective equipment (PPE),
The case of a Brisbane hospital doctor who became infected while treating COVID patients should have been entirely preventable with the proper personal protective equipment (PPE), Dr Khorshid said this week.
Dr Khorshid said the Queensland doctor had “done all the right things” but still contracted COVID, which he said was “completely preventable” for frontline health and quarantine workers with proper equipment and the vaccine.
The doctor had treated COVID-19 patients Wednesday morning and presented for testing Friday after developing symptoms.
Dr Khorshid told Sky News that if all healthcare workers were vaccinated, outbreaks could be limited.
“On a population basis what we’re aiming for is to stop people getting really, really sick, to stop people ending up in hospital and to stop people dying from COVID,” he said.
“All of these vaccines have been shown to be extraordinarily effective at reducing that severe illness, and that’s the main point of this vaccination program.
“Around hotel quarantine though and our healthcare workers we are hoping that these vaccines will provide some block to catching the virus and to transmitting it to other people, but we just don’t have the data as yet as to how effective they are at that.
“That’s why all these other measures, the borders, the PPE, these are still required even once we start to get the vaccine rolled out.”
Dr Moy told Sky that the initial dose of the COVID vaccines have been “pretty much shown” to provide 80 to 90 per cent protection against serious illness and hospitalisation “within about a month."
