The Department of Health has unveiled three new measures to help reduce the number of healthcare workers being infected with COVID-19.
The Department said the measures were designed to help all the States and Territories learn from what had occurred in Victoria and from new information internationally.
“Firstly, a new partnership has been established between the Infection Control Expert Group (ICEG) and the National COVID-19 Evidence Taskforce,” the Department said.
“With so much evidence emerging so quickly, this partnership will bring together Australia’s leading infection control practitioners, many of whom are frontline clinicians, with other senior healthcare workers, to review the latest evidence on infection prevention and control during COVID-19,” it said.
Secondly, the Department said the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee had endorsed an expansion of national surveillance of healthcare worker infection to ensure a better understanding of COVID-19 among healthcare workers at the State and Territory level.
“This will provide more information on the type of healthcare workers who are becoming infected and enable State and Territory Governments to target their investigations and interventions based on national-level data,” it said.
Thirdly it said funding was being provided for a new network of epidemiologists – or ‘disease detectives’ – to be available on request by State and Territory public health units to assist investigating healthcare worker outbreaks.
“They will also gather and analyse data on healthcare worker infection at a national level,” the Department said.
It said it was also important that healthcare facilities continued to review their controls and strengthened them to ensure workers were better protected.
