‘You can only build a net, it’s never a wall,’ says Dr Michael Novy, who cared for 160 inmates through a flap in a locked door
Sun 19 Dec 2021 16.30 GMTrom prisoners to the homeless and people living with disabilities – these are some of the at-risk communities hidden from public view during the pandemic. Now the health workers working with them share their stories.Covid was a little bit outside our realm because we were in a relatively protected environment. That whole barrier of being isolated was somewhat beneficial as long as the virus stayed out of there.
We managed to look after about 160 inmates who happened to be positive. No one got very sick. They all got better. So the system worked. Covid is a terrible thing. We’ve lost a lot of people, but we’ve learned as an organisation … we can come together.I have a very strong memory of how I felt last year when Covid first came to our shores and we were in the preparedness phase … seeing what was happening overseas and seeing what was coming and feeling really overwhelmed about that.
The case numbers were going up and up and up, and [we were] seeing more … come into the hospital … and I remember the very first time I had a patient that passed away. Seeing it in real life, they were in that room, by themselves, family couldn’t come, nurses weren’t going in hours at a time, and everyone doing their best to give them comfort, but the reality is they’re dying on their own. That was really hard.
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