Tasmania is about 12 months away from living with COVID.
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That is the estimation of the Tasmanian Health Service-North's pandemic response and preparedness nursing director Jan Coull.
Ms Coull's estimation came as Tasmania dealt with the latest wave of the coronavirus, which has seen the state's three major referral hospitals escalate to level three of their COVID management plans.
"What we're currently doing is working out what living with COVID actually looks like from our hospital's high-risk setting," she said.
"At the moment we're in the height of an outbreak, which is giving us a great understanding of how we manage the hospital in this outbreak situation.
"Moving forward, I think we'll be looking more into how we are going to manage living with COVID, so what that will look like in the future, whether it's less infection control restrictions that we have in place, but we're working through that.
"I think Tasmania is behind the mainland, I think living with COVID is probably a good six to 12 months behind living with COVID on the mainland."
I think Tasmania is behind the mainland, I think living with COVID is probably a good six to 12 months behind living with COVID on the mainland.
- Pandemic response and preparedness nursing director Jan Coull
With decades of nursing and management experience at the LGH Ms Coull took on the role of pandemic response for the North and North-West of the state at the behest of LGH chief executive Eric Daniels in September 2020.
As the scope of the role grew, Ms Coull handed off the responsibility for the North-West to the region's nursing director to focus on the North of the state.
She said the role had evolved with the needs of the pandemic.
"When I first came on board we were in that phase of border restrictions. We were in the preparedness phase, so we were looking at getting our hospitals ready for when the borders opened and were also looking at the vaccination programs for the hospitals," she said.
Ms Coull was also involved in the management of the North's community case management facility, which she said was a priority in preparing the state for COVID prior to borders opening on December 15.
"Getting Coach House was a key focus at the end of last year, getting that set up and ready for the borders opening - and we took our first patient less than 48 hours after the border was opened," she said.
Since the ending of the public health emergency, the role of response and preparedness has shifted with Ms Coull saying her focus is on ensuring the public health service can function as efficiently as possible.
Part of that planning involves a daily meeting with the regional commander, medical and nursing senior clinical leads, corporate service managers and key COVID services.
"We talk about the emerging issues, we talk about isolation of our patients," she said.
"There's an infectious diseases physician there every day, there's infection control leads there every day. "That meeting has been held every day since we had our first patient, rain, hail or shine."
Following the reduction of mask and social distancing protocols, and the introduction of the highly transmissible BA.4 and BA.5 variants into the Tasmanian community, hospital COVID cases have risen to an all-time high.
According to Ms Coull, the spike in hospital transmission in Launceston has been - in part - driven by lax attitudes to COVID screening at the LGH.
"When you are screened to come into the hospital, you can tell the screening anything. so I'd like to see a little bit more honesty," she said.
"It doesn't really affect us that much if they come in and they're well, but if they're unwell and they come in, and they know they shouldn't have come in, there's a potential there for an outbreak to happen in a ward situation."
The closure of wards has been an ongoing issue at the LGH with three wards at the hospital closed due to outbreaks, as well as the acute medical ward - the hospital's primary COVID ward.
Ms Coull said the issue of communicating that unwell visitors should not enter the hospital was something she would like to see more of.
"Broader communications outside to the community, maybe through the media or through our department's media comms, because I think what happens when you take masks away, or you take COVID restrictions away people think that we're okay," she said. "But actually at the moment, we're not. It's very virulent, the bug and it's very much out in our community and it's impacting our staff and our hospital."
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