Victoria’s hospitals are likely to reach capacity within weeks, an emergency doctor in Melbourne has warned.
Key points:
- Too many healthy aged care residents are being transferred to hospital, Dr Sarah Whitelaw says
- She says the biggest problem facing Victoria’s health system is the number of healthcare workers contracting coronavirus
- Dr Sanjaya Senanayake says while hospitals are under stress they still had capacity to cope
Dr Sarah Whitelaw said hospitals were overburdened with the high number of coronavirus cases as well as healthy aged care residents who were being transferred to hospital.
The biggest problem, she said, was the number of hospital staff contracting the virus.
“We thought at the beginning of the pandemic that our problem was going to be intensive care beds and the number of ventilators that we had … we’ve all been blindsided by the fact that our problem is the workforce,” Dr Whitelaw told 7.30.
“I think the number of healthcare worker infections is a real con