An emergency “Code Yellow” has been declared in one state’s public hospital system as a new Covid and flu wave smashes health staffing numbers and generates a surge in new patient presentations.
South Australia Health chief executive Robyn Lawrence triggered the emergency on Thursday and at a press conference on Friday morning confirmed at least nine elective surgeries would be postponed and some patients at Adelaide’s overwhelmed metropolitan hospitals would be transferred to regional centres.
“I’ve been able to see this growing number of Covid presentations in particular, but I’m also seeing a growth in pneumonia and heart failure and other conditions which can be triggered by older Australians having a viral illness of a variety of different types,” she said.
“That’s not unusual in winter but what we are experiencing at the minute, is we currently have 200 more patients in our hospital than the same time last year, and that’s significant uplift for our system.”
Respiratory illnesses are the prime driver for the surge in sickness, she said, and around 270 hospital staff were currently off sick with Covid or the flu, and about 140 patients are in hospital with Covid or the flu.
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