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Westmead hospital went into emergency response mode on Tuesday night amid reports of ambulances waiting 12 hours to admit Covid-positive patients through emergency.
Westmead hospital went into emergency response mode on Tuesday night amid reports of ambulances waiting 12 hours to admit Covid-positive patients through emergency. The hospital has cancelled live donor transplants indefinitely as a result of the Covid outbreak. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP
Westmead hospital went into emergency response mode on Tuesday night amid reports of ambulances waiting 12 hours to admit Covid-positive patients through emergency. The hospital has cancelled live donor transplants indefinitely as a result of the Covid outbreak. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

NSW hospitals warning: nurses and staff ‘flat out’ and ‘exhausted’ as Covid numbers soar

This article is more than 2 years old

The nurses union has rubbished New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard’s claims that Sydney’s hospitals are coping with the city’s Covid outbreak, warning multiple facilities are under “enormous pressure” and have “very little capacity” in their emergency departments.

NSW set a new daily record on Wednesday with 919 local Covid cases. There were 645 Covid patients in hospital, with 113 people in intensive care, but transmission and exposure at multiple hospitals has sidelined significant numbers of health staff due to isolation requirements.

Despite assurances from Hazzard that hospitals in Sydney were “coping”, Guardian Australia has been contacted by people who had kidney transplants and heart angioplasties booked in at public hospitals, but had their operations cancelled and not rescheduled due to staffing shortages and Covid exposure within the hospital system.

NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association general secretary Brett Holmes said union members at Western Sydney Local Health District, where Westmead hospital is located, as well as at hospitals in the south-west and the Nepean Blue Mountains area, “are definitely under enormous pressure”.

“The system hasn’t fallen over yet, but our members are reporting that they are flat out. There’s very little capacity in their emergency departments and ambulances are being diverted around the city.

“Our members are the ones at the bedside and they are really stretched. They feel exhausted ... The reality is, nurses will keep soldiering on until they can go no further, either to the point where they get sick or they burn out and can’t do it anymore, but they do hang on for their colleagues,” Holmes said.

A woman in her 30s, who asked to remain anonymous, contacted Guardian Australia after live donor transplants were cancelled indefinitely at Westmead hospital as a result of the Covid outbreak.

The patient had received a kidney at the hospital seven years earlier, however it had recently failed, and the woman had arranged to received a kidney from her mother in September.

The woman said she was told last Friday that the live organ transplant program was considered elective surgery, and could therefore not go ahead as hospital staff in the unit because casual Covid contacts or were diverted to other units.

She was told the unit does not expect to reopen until at least November.

Unable to go on dialysis because of other health conditions, the woman must now follow a strict diet involving counting potassium, sodium, magnesium and fluid intake to avoid consuming excess of anything that is renally cleared.

She said her life now involves regular testing, taking a cocktail of different medications and “hanging on for dear life”.

She and her mother have also been in isolation “every day” to avoid Covid exposure in the lead-up to the kidney donation procedure.

“I was of the understanding that transplantation is emergency surgery since renal failure constitutes a ‘life-and-death’ situation,” she said.

“These are frightening developments for people like myself who are already unwell and who depend on a functional public health system,” the woman said.

Elsewhere, patients booked in for procedures at Nepean hospital – which has experienced Covid transmission between patients on its wards – have reported their operations have been cancelled and not rescheduled.

One man who contacted Guardian Australia said he was booked in for heart angioplasty surgery at Nepean hospital for 18 August, but that his “much-needed operation” was “cancelled at the last minute”. He has not yet been informed about rescheduling his operation.

Healthcare workers, who spoke to the Guardian but were not authorised to speak to the media, agreed with government messaging that ICU bed numbers in Sydney can be expanded from 500 to 2,000, but were concerned there was insufficient staffing to care for that many intensive care patients.

Westmead hospital, which serves western Sydney and some of the hotspot local government areas, went into emergency response mode on Tuesday night amid reports of ambulances waiting 12 hours to admit Covid-positive patients through emergency.

On Wednesday, as urgent steps were being taken to expand capacity at Westmead, the hospital’s staff were managing about 1,500 Covid patients in the community and 121 patients in their wards. There are 23 currently in ICU, Hazzard said.

“You have to understand that the individual hospitals from time to time will all be under some sort of stress, especially in the epicentre of the breakout which is in western and south-western Sydney,” he said.

“The NSW Health system is probably the best in the world. All the information given to me from the doctors and nurses and our public health staff is that the system is coping,” he said.

Beds are being made available for urgent cases in Westmead private hospital, patients are being transferred to other hospitals and a new short-stay emergency department is being established for the less unwell, to avoid “ramping” – when ambulances are forced to queue to admit patients.

But Holmes said: “I think the minister is portraying a confident demeanour for the safety and security of the community because he’s portraying the entire system.”

“But we know the areas of western and south-western Sydney and Nepean are stretched and that’s putting further pressure on others.”

Do you know more about how Sydney hospitals are responding to pressure from the Covid outbreak? Contact elias.visontay@theguardian.com You can remain anonymous.

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