South Australian public hospitals operating in internal emergency as elective surgeries are paused

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Authorities say an internal state of emergency across the South Australian System is expected to last for a week. Almost all elective surgeries have been cancelled across both metropolitan and regional public hospitals amid what the health minister says is ‘unprecedented pressure on the health system’.

Transcript

00:00 A system-wide internal emergency has been declared by the Health Department boss due

00:06 to many staff being off sick with COVID.

00:09 Now SA Health Chief Executive Robin Lawrence called the code yellow yesterday afternoon.

00:14 So what this means is that all available beds have been opened and almost all elective surgeries

00:20 have been cancelled in metropolitan and regional hospitals.

00:23 In a statement, Dr Lawrence said that the decision was made due to significant demand

00:27 on the health system this week.

00:30 Now Dr Lawrence said all elective surgery except for category 1 and paediatric urgent

00:35 category 2 had been cancelled in metropolitan and country hospitals.

00:40 Now she said around 270 staff in metropolitan hospitals were currently off sick with COVID

00:46 and more than 140 patients were in hospital with COVID and flu.

00:51 Now all Adelaide metropolitan emergency departments were operating yesterday before the code yellow

00:56 was called at a code white, which means that they were over capacity on Thursday.

01:02 Now it's not clear whether there are other hospitals across the country that are facing

01:05 similar situations at this stage, but what is clear is that vaccinations statistics from

01:11 the Department of Health are showing that around 5.67 million people have been vaccinated

01:17 against influenza as of May 19.

01:20 Now this is around 700,000 less than the previous year and is the lowest number of the past

01:25 four years up to May 19.

01:28 So what we do know is that those vaccination rates are down across the country and yearly

01:33 influenza vaccination is recommended for anyone over the age of six months.

01:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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