Originally Posted by
compressor stall
Re the MEL Holiday Inn outbreak. To be fair, the same nebuliser driven outbreak (assuming that's what happened) could have happened in any other state undertaking hotel floor Q ( NT, not looking at you
). Personal baggage from your flight is certainly not searched in WA. Had he sick man arrived into Perth with his nebuliser, the same infection would have happened to a similar number of people and they may have been worse off with (until last week) no community mask wearing and limited testing.
SOPS - if you read the fine print of most the states, such exemptions have always been in the fine print. I'm not as intricately familiar with SA's as I have been with every other state, but I'd be surprised if it was different.
In the early days of the pandemic nebulisers were banned for use in many hospitals, as were 'aerosol generating procedures'. I doubt in this case it could have been avoided. Someone got sick, maybe they already had respiratory issues and had their own nebuliser, which they used, leading to this spread in a place not designed to contain aerosols.
If however, the scenario was that the patient tested positive, became unwell and then was GIVEN this treatment by authorities... then that is a massive clusterf*ck on behalf of the VIC Health team/ whoever manages HQ at the moment, seemingly against their own hospital procedures.