Home carers for elderly, people with disabilities worried about lack of PPE after nurse exposed to man with coronavirus – ABC News

Updated March 31, 2020 09:04:09

A Victorian nurse who says she repeatedly treated a man with coronavirus fears she could have unknowingly infected dozens of other vulnerable patients.

The 58-year-old says an elderly patient, whose home she visits twice weekly for her job with a private contractor, has tested positive to COVID-19 but she did not find out for more than a week.

She had called an ambulance for him after visiting his home to change a dressing and discovering he was having breathing difficulties.

"I didn't for a second think it was coronavirus," said the nurse, who did not want to reveal her identity for fear of losing her job.

"He's basically housebound. The only thing he ever does is walk up to the shops."

When paramedics arrived, they were completely covered in personal protective equipment (PPE).

"They [the paramedics] had whole hazmat suits on and they were protected from head to toe. Whereas I'm standing there in my uniform wearing a pair of gloves ready to walk on to the next vulnerable client after he [the patient] went off to hospital."

She said it would be a further eight days before she was told the man had tested positive which is when she believes her employer also found out but that in that time, she had carried on seeing dozens of patients.

"I did speak to the company and they said, 'we'll just follow it up, but keep working'," she said.

"The response was very non-committal but just business as usual."

The nurse believes she visited 30 to 40 other patients in that period.

"I have been in people's homes every day vulnerable people in society. Elderly people, people with lots of co-morbidities and lots of health issues," she said.

"Plus, of course, I go home to my family every night, and then there's all the people in the community I've had contact with."

The woman, who has a long-term cardiac issue, has placed herself in home-quarantine.

She was advised by her employer that her patients would not be informed unless she was diagnosed with coronavirus herself. But she is unable to access testing unless she develops symptoms.

"The criteria [for testing] are quite strict at the moment and they said unless I'm showing symptoms just go home and isolate," she said.

"If I am positive, by the time they then find those people it's weeks after the fact, so how many others have been in contact [with them] in the interim?

"It's just ludicrous."

The Victorian Department of Health did not respond to questions about guidelines for nurses who had visited at home patients who later tested positive for COVID-19. Instead, it directed the ABC to departmental advice that maintains people without symptoms should not be tested.

The CEO of the Australian College of Nursing, Kylie Ward, said the incident was appalling.

"I am completely concerned about the welfare and wellbeing of this nurse," Ms Ward said.

"Imagine what she's thinking. She's acutely aware of the impact she's had on the community and what that spread could mean.

"We're doing everything we can for containment and we're listening to the lockdowns and the stages and then we're letting our frontline workers, through no fault of their own, potentially be the people that are spreading this virus."

Ms Ward said all Australians should be concerned by this nurse's story, not just because she could have spread the virus, but because her own life was endangered by a dire lack of PPE.

"Paramedics are lucky enough to be equipped with the full PPE," she said. "Nurses in our community aren't getting anything like that.

"They're lucky if they get a disposable mask, and there are thousands of community nurses."

She said the Federal Government had created a system which meant PPE did not reach home-care nurses.

"The nurses going into the community that are not attached to GP clinics have not been able to access PPE through the primary health networks at the instruction of the Government," Ms Ward said.

"With health workers dying in China, Italy, Spain and the US, we should be very concerned. If our first line of defence goes down, then who's going to look after the rest of us?"

Disability support providers are also worried about the lack of PPE available for home-care workers.

Many are visiting the homes of vulnerable people with disabilities, without gowns or gloves.

One support worker, who also wanted to withhold her identity, said staff had asked their private employer to supply face masks, but were told they were not required.

Instead, she resorted to making her own makeshift masks using paper towel, rubber bands and staples.

"None of the masks are going to protect 100 per cent, but it is giving you a barrier," she said.

The woman also enlisted a quilting friend to make face masks for her and other workers, and members of her local community also banded together to make masks.

Even without PPE, disability support workers said they had no choice but to keep working.

"We're working with so many people per day," Bianca Mazzocchi, a support worker for Able Australia in Melbourne, said.

"I worked over the weekend and we had run out of masks. We had to reuse goggles and we were down to the last bottle of sanitiser."

Ms Mazzocchi's partner is also a care worker. He tested negative after experiencing coronavirus symptoms but had the test been positive, Ms Mazzocchi and all of his co-workers would have been off work for at least 14 days to self-isolate.

Providers say the knock-on effect from an incapacitated disability support workforce could be disastrous.

If people with a disability did not have support, they would have no option but to go to hospital if they contracted coronavirus. There would be no care workers to support them if they were ill.

"What we really want to be able to do is support any of our residents who become unwell, and they're in the category that don't need to go to hospital," Able Australia CEO Kate MacRae said.

"My real concern is that without adequate PPE, we won't be able to do that. And then the default position is to go to a hospital system that probably won't be able to accept them."

About 40,000 people with a disability live in specialist disability accommodation around Australia, either sharing homes with up to five people, or residing on their own in supported independent living units.

It is estimated more than 40,000 care workers support that population.

Without PPE, that workforce could easily be sidelined, National Disability Services CEO David Moody said.

"The more workers taken out of the workforce because of the absence of PPE the greater the likelihood of people with disability ending up having to go to hospital for support."

"What we'd be hoping for is that PPE is made available to the [disability] sector on the same basis as health and aged care as soon as possible. That's all we've been asking for."

The ABC has contacted the federal Health Department for comment.

Topics: disabilities, covid-19, diseases-and-disorders, health, epidemics-and-pandemics, melbourne-3000, vic, sydney-2000, nsw, australia

First posted March 31, 2020 06:06:33

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Home carers for elderly, people with disabilities worried about lack of PPE after nurse exposed to man with coronavirus - ABC News