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The first of Western Australia's specialist coronavirus clinics have opened in Perth, with more than 30 people queueing up outside Royal Perth Hospital's Ainslie House before the clinic even opened its doors this morning.
Key points:
- COVID clinics are open from today at three major Perth hospitals
- Only people who meet certain criteria should present for testing
- The Government may look to extend this to the regions as needed
The State Government last week announced three clinics would open to cater for an expected demand in testing for COVID-19 for those who displayed symptoms and had recently returned from overseas.
So far, there have been six confirmed cases of the virus in WA.
The latest was a man in his 40s, whose mother had recently returned from Indonesia and tested positive.
Meanwhile a woman in her 60s also tested positive for COVID-19 after her husband returned from Iran — which is dealing with one of the largest outbreaks of the disease outside China.
The specialist COVID clinics will be open from 8:00am to 8:00pm at Royal Perth, Sir Charles Gairdner and Fiona Stanley hospitals, with the Government leaving open the possibility of setting up more as the virus takes hold.
Clinics only for those at higher risk
Health Minister Roger Cook said only patients who met certain criteria should attend the clinics at this stage.
"The COVID clinics are dedicated clinics for those people in the higher-risk categories of having been exposed to the COVID-19 virus," he said.
Mr Cook said people should only present at the clinics if they:
- Were experiencing flu-like symptoms
- Had travelled from overseas or come in contact with someone who has travelled from overseas
- Had come in contact with someone who was a confirmed case or a suspected case of coronavirus
Mr Cook said the clinics would be expanded to regional centres in the coming weeks.
"I stress, we may need to broaden these definitions and we may need to increase the number of these COVID clinics particularly in our regional areas of Western Australia," he said.
"We're looking to open those COVID clinics in our larger population centres across regional Western Australia.
"So we anticipate we'll be opening one in Bunbury in the first instance, but also extending them to Albany, Kalgoorlie, Geraldton, Karratha, South Hedland and Broome.
"But what we'll be doing is rolling these out as we need to."
Mr Cook said the main focus was on Perth's metropolitan area, where all COVID-19 cases in WA had so far been confirmed.
Majority met criteria and needed tests
East Metropolitan Health Service chief executive and coordinator of the COVID clinics Liz MacLeod said the majority attending this morning fit the criteria.
"From a Royal Perth Hospital clinic perspective, we've had just over 70 people through the clinic, up until about [11:00am]," she said.
"Which has been pretty similar across the three clinics.
"Of those 70 people, 10 didn't meet the criteria, the remaining people have been further assessed and half of those have required testing.
"At this stage all of the people from Royal Perth have been able to go home and will obviously be waiting for their test results."
WA pandemic plan to be released
Premier Mark McGowan said the Government would release its pandemic plan as early as tomorrow.
"The plan itself goes through different agencies and what might need to be done in certain circumstances," he said.
"The most important thing is we have our pandemic plan, we are prepared for what might come, we have opened the clinics, we're ensuring as best we can people remain calm and informed."
Mr McGowan said the virus presented a serious economic threat to the state.
"I also just want to emphasise, our small businesses are suffering," he said.
"Continue to go out and buy products … do whatever it might be to keep our economy strong.
"Clearly we are in dangerous economic times and we need to keep confidence in the economy."
Calls for Commonwealth to act on telehealth
Mr Cook also backed calls from the GP community for an item to be made available through Medicare for telehealth.
"We have to have a telehealth consult available to GPs in the event that they need to be able to meet a patient remotely," Mr Cook said.
"And secondly, there may come a time when a GP themselves has to self isolate, so we want to keep them in action making sure they can still see their patients.
"We've written to the Federal Government, and my colleague Greg Hunt the federal Minister for Health, to say look, we really want you to consider extending telehealth consults right across the MBS (Medicare Benefits Schedule).
"We're expecting the Federal Government to announce soon that they'll have an MBS item number for patients who are suspected to have been in contact with the COVID-19 virus."
Topics: health, healthcare-clinic, healthcare-facilities, infectious-diseases-other, diseases-and-disorders, epidemics-and-pandemics, perth-6000, wa
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