Opinion: Any new quarantine facility will need a great deal of thought, planning and expert staff to ensure its success
in remote areas, or new buildings with high-tech ventilation systems to minimise the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19. But there are far greater risks than airborne transmission when it comes to quarantine.
A gesture as simple as a staff member wiping a hair off their face or scratching their nose at the wrong place or wrong time could result in infection, so our infection control processes are regimented and we have a very low threshold for requiring our staff to quarantine for inadvertent breaches. We have developed a model of providing healthcare to those in quarantine without posing a risk to our hospitals and to the wider community.RPA virtual, based at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, provides most medical treatment via virtual health care so that interactions between travellers and our staff are kept at a minimum.Credit:The integration with public health services is critical. Every patient has multiple layers of clinical checks before they can be discharged.
The local laboratory provides our public health team with rapid results of staff testing so we can detect any new infections immediately. Our public health team and contact tracers then spring into action if a staff member tests positive to avoid any widespread community lockdowns.
We have developed a culture with no tolerance for risk, and where there is vigilance and transparency in reporting any slip-ups, so that any breach can be identified and swiftly managed. Our public health team gets rapid results of daily saliva and weekly nasopharyngeal testing of all staff, prepared to spring into action if a staff member tests positive, to avoid any widespread community lockdowns. Every traveller has multiple layers of checks before they can be released from isolation.
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