MORE than 600 Sunraysia COVID-19 patients are being treated remotely in their own homes to keep Mildura Base Public Hospital from being overwhelmed by rapidly rising case numbers, which are growing "by the hour".
Dr Kane Treble, the clinical director of the hospital's COVID home-monitoring program, told Sunraysia Daily on Sunday that Mildura's health system would not be able to cope if the huge numbers of patients had to be treated at its Ontario Avenue site.
"If everyone were to try to present to the emergency department at the same time, the whole system would collapse," he said.
The official active case number for the Mildura local government area on Sunday was 564, but this was lagging behind the real-time numbers presented by Dr Treble, who believes many more cases will be out in the community, but as yet unidentified – especially as there is a severe lack of self-applied rapid antigen tests all over Australia.
He said a view among some in the community that home-treated patients must not be very ill was "perfectly understandable when the vast majority of people are fine ... symptomatic and they are miserable, but they'll be well, they'll survive", but that the relative ease with which some people coped with the disease created its own dangers.
"The concern is that those people will pass it on to those who won't be fine, who will become unwell and, unfortunately, some people will die because of this virus," he said. "It's trying to build a buffer to protect those people.
"The trick here is to track those who are at risk of deteriorating suddenly, because they are the ones who will need the hospital beds when they become unwell.
"Unfortunately, we've had lots of cases that have required (hospital admission), but we've been able to catch them each time and send them to the hospital and make sure they get the care that they need."
Dr Treble's regular team of seven to 10, plus other health workers "we borrow or steal" as needed, make home visits where necessary, but also use phone calls, SMS reporting and high-tech medical equipment to monitor patients.
"The thing that actually saves lives is the pulse oximeters, little devices that clip on the fingers to measure blood-oxygen concentrations, and it's the most sensitive and accurate way to determine who is going to benefit from coming into the hospital and receiving further care," he said.
Dr Treble said he wasn't pessimistic about the future of the pandemic, but that we appeared to still be far from overcoming it.
"Thankfully, we do have extremely high vaccination rates in the region, which is giving people a lot of protection, but I think it would be foolhardy to think that alone is going to protect people," he said.
"Some people have gone on, despite vaccination, despite young age and despite no other medical problems, to develop severe disease."
"I think anyone that's watched the pandemic evolve is a bit nervous right now. We know case numbers are escalating dramatically and they are likely to continue to escalate for the foreseeable future.
"It is highly probable that everyone in Mildura will get coronavirus at some point. It's about making sure our systems are set up to adequately prepare the population for that and, thankfully, that's all in place at the moment."
