VISITOR restrictions remain in place and two Ballarat Base Hospital wards are in quarantine with COVID-19 outbreaks prompting Grampians Health to make an internal emergency call likely to last until at least mid-next week.
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Grampians Health acute operations director Ben Kelly has moved to reassure the community the hospital was still offering good care but code yellow was an urgent COVID-19 safety measure aimed to keep patients and staff safe.
Anyone who is unwell is urged to seek other care options, such as general practitioners or Nurse-On-Call, before presenting to emergency in this time. This aims to ease pressure on resources for the most urgent care and hospital beds.
Tight hospital visitor restrictions remain in place, despite the government flagging limits could ease from Saturday.
We were looking forward as much as anyone else to easing some of those restrictions but it's simply not appropriate to do so at the moment.
- Ben Kelly, Grampians Health Ballarat acute operations director
"We were looking forward as much as anyone else to easing some of those restrictions but it's simply not appropriate to do so at the moment," Mr Kelly told media.
"Clearly we do have the ability to ease those restrictions at a local level...the advice we received was that we need to apply guidelines consistent with local needs. While we're in a COVID-19 outbreak management phase, we need to maintain the existing visitor restrictions."
Mr Kelly confirmed the code yellow was called late Friday after patients in two non-respiratory wards tested positive to the virus. One was on Wednesday while another patient, in a separate ward, tested positive on Thursday morning.
Mr Kelly said both patients had been moved to the COVID-19 ward and other patients from these wards were being closely monitored.
Grampians Health was treating 17 patients with COVID-19 in Ballarat Base Hospital on Friday morning, including one patient in intensive care. A further 32 patients were in quarantine.
Mr Kelly said these were volatile numbers due to the virus' infectious nature.
The quarantine conditions sparked a bed and staff shortage that prompted the code yellow emergency call. This follows a statewide code brown restriction early this year.
Ballarat Base Hospital has previously been called on as a streaming hospital to accept an over-flow of COVID-19 patients. Mr Kelly said the health service was working to avoid transferring Ballarat patients to other cities.
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