New wave of cases is greatest challenge of pandemic

MILDURA’S health system is facing its toughest challenge of the pandemic, as daily new COVID case numbers pass 100 for the first time and threaten to balloon in the weeks to come.

Mildura Base Public Hospital chief executive Terry Welch has told Sunraysia Daily that the system is coping, but is under “enormous strain”.

>”It’s affecting our service, it’s placing huge strain on our service, and I’m very concerned about the coming weeks if this is not the peak,” Mr Welch said on Thursday.

“We’ve had more than 90 referrals to our Hospital in the Home program in the past two days alone,” he said.

“We are well over 200 in that area now and it’s placing enormous strain.”

Across Victoria, almost 22,000 new cases were reported on Thursday, along with another six COVID deaths.

There were more than 61,000 active cases in the state, 243 of them in the Mildura local government area after 102 cases were reported here on Thursday.

Mr Welch said the hospital had expected a surge in numbers, as had been already seen in Sydney and Melbourne, and had planned for it, but “there’s no question that, per capita, we are seeing a very high increase in cases, which is a real concern”.

“A lot of people aren’t critically unwell, but that doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t need to be checked in on, have some care parameters defined, and given the support that they need, because every case is different,” he said.

“We are reallocating extensive resources to our Hospital in the Home program to cope with this demand.

“We’re also seeing high volumes through our emergency department with what we would now consider high-risk presentations, where people have presented very unwell.

“This is by far going to be what we would hope will be the highest-volume outbreak, so let’s hope this is the final one, but the numbers, as everyone can see, are just going way beyond anything we’ve seen or expected before.”

Mr Welch welcomed a retightening of pandemic restrictions by the Victorian Government on Thursday. These include new density limits, stronger mask mandates and mandatory reporting of positive results from self-testing.

“The evidence from case numbers is that some controls are needed,” Mr Welch said. Diligent social practices and booster vaccinations would “slow it down”.

He said high numbers of people now presenting to the under-pressure emergency department, some of them very ill, was of great concern.

“We do understand that people sometimes have trouble accessing care elsewhere, but it’s putting the whole system under strain,” he said.

“We’ve seen across the state, the ambulance service is at Code Red, emergency departments are absolutely at capacity.

“What we are saying to everyone is please consider what you present for, if it can be treated by a GP, a pharmacist.

“There are incredible online services now, very easy to navigate, where you can get care for general conditions,” Mr Welch said.

The hospital had been “24/7 managing COVID” through the Christmas period and staff were working under constant strain and at risk from the virus themselves while out in the community.

“As case numbers hit 100 a day, and they’re clearly going to go up you would think, we have staff in those hundreds, so we are losing staff just like every other business, critical resources through community transmission, and that is placing enormous strain our business, just as it is on everyone else in town, and I ask people to really be cognisant of that,” Mr Welch said.

“The staff here are remarkable and I could not be more proud of the work they have done through this.”

The hospital would “very quickly” be introducing more self-care assistance for appropriate patients to relieve the strain, and Mr Welch said he was aware that Mildura’s ambulance service was also obtaining more resources to handle the surge.

Mr Welch said that like most people he was enjoying the freedoms to socialise in the post-lockdown era, but he noted that, in the streets of Mildura, “you wouldn’t know COVID’s in the town”.

“There’s people socialising everywhere … that’s the reality, we’ve got to live with that now, but that’s a challenge,” he said.