Some of the mothers and newborns receiving care at Auckland City Hospital may be transferred to facilities outside of Auckland, after a parent tested positive for Covid-19.
The individual’s baby has been in the neonatal ICU alongside 35 other newborns, who’re all now being tested, as are others who’ve visited the unit, recent discharges, and a “large number of staff”.
The whole unit also had to be isolated.
Auckland DHB’s Director of Provider Services, Mike Shepherd wouldn’t say whether the parent that tested positive is the mother or father, and said the number of contacts is yet to be established.
“We think the risk is low to both our staff and the babies in the unit but we're going through and testing everyone with a range of different testing regimes.
“We've got through a large number of tests already, in the hundreds, and we'll continue that process over the next 24/48 hrs,” Shepherd said.
The individual’s baby has been in the neonatal ICU alongside 35 other newborns. (Source: Other)
All tests have come back negative so far, including that for the positive case’s baby.
“International literature shows us we have good airflows within ICUs, we have good infection prevention control, as well we know when patients are ventilated that also lowers their risk.”
The DHB wants the public to know the hospital, and its neonatal intensive care unit is safe.
“We have fantastic infection prevention control procedures within our unit so we're very confident that those work well.
“We're also working with our regional partners, other neonatal intensive care units, and maternity units to make sure we spread the load of this and manage it appropriately.”
He said the hospital is talking to facilities around New Zealand, as part of its contingency planning.
“We have had conversations within the metro Auckland region and Waikato, around the transfer of mothers, we don't think we'll be needing to transfer beyond that at this stage, but we'll continue those conversations,” Shepherd says.
He said it is always a possibility that families will need to be moved, and not uncommon with the national neonatal network.
“I think people would expect us to think about what the possibilities we might need to take are."
There’s been no policy around getting hospital visitors tested, but the DHB says people have been carefully screened.
Shepherd said, for now, “I think there will be ongoing testing of parents and caregivers as they need to visit, we'll be working that out of the next few days”.
But in terms of making testing part of the requirement for visitors, he added, “I don’t think we're at that point just yet, but we'll be looking through the things we do and obviously they’ll change overtime.”
1News asked Auckland DHB if there’s any concern that the parent who tested positive broke any rules, but it said it doesn’t have information on that, saying that’s not its focus right now.
SHARE ME