Victorian protective service officers are seen walking on patrol past a sign to urge people to stay home as lockdown of Melbourne forces people to stay at home if not working. Photo / AP
Victorian protective service officers are seen walking on patrol past a sign to urge people to stay home as lockdown of Melbourne forces people to stay at home if not working. Photo / AP
A nurse who reportedly worked at Melbourne's quarantine hotels says those in charge of the programme were more worried about appeasing guests than infection control.
The nurse, who did not want to be named, told the ABC that some guests were given extra "fresh air" breaks and took advantage of the increasingly relaxed system, threatening to self-harm if they were not given allowances to leave their rooms.
She said a suspected suicide during the first two weeks of hotel quarantine may have unnerved the Department of Health and Human Services.
People line up to enter a supermarket hours before a citywide curfew is introduced in Melbourne. Photo / AP
Epidemiologist Tony Blakely says Victoria appears to be heading in the right direction, one week after the state imposed tough new rules.
"I think we are doing pretty good," he told the Today show. "The graph I have been doing with the five day smoothed average shows the numbers turned on 30 July, about a week after wearing masks.
"It makes good sense. It flattened and is starting to come down now. I'm reasonably comfortable where we are sitting given where we could have been sitting.
"What I expect to see by the end of the week is the numbers track down at stage 4 has kicked in.
"It happens about 7 to 10 days after stage 4. As we head into this weekend, I'm expecting more good news, at least I'm hoping for it."
'I'm just tired': Doctor hits out
A Melbourne doctor says there is a "really dire situation" with medical staff infections rising in Victoria.
The number of active infections in Victorian health workers jumped to nearly 1000 at the weekend, bringing the total number infected since the start of the pandemic to 1725.
Mukesh Haikerwal said there is a real shortage of protective equipment for medical workers.
He said he was holding up OK, but he was "just tired" of no one listening.
"I'm not tired of doing the work, not tired of looking after people, not tired of advocating for them. Tired because no one is listening," he said.
"Yesterday was the worst single day for deaths in this state in this country. Not acceptable.
"The number of people who are in hospital really high. Not acceptable. You don't want to get to ICU and when you get to ICU you want to make sure you have people there to look after you."
The Age reports this morning that one in five doctors and nurses has limited and in some cases no access to face masks.
Haikerwal said some medical workers now have to rely on charity for face masks.
"That's ridiculous that we have to do it this way. We don't get gloves we don't get masks," Haikerwal told the Today show.
"That's wrong. These people are on the front line, they're now getting sick. We don't want 25 to 30 per cent of our teams to go down. We want to be able to be providing care for our people not just for Covid but for the general health that they have to maintain."
He said Covid wasn't the only problem facing Victorians.
"We worry about Covid and Covid is something that we very much are focused on. It's not Covid that will kill people on its own.
"There's other diseases, heart disease is the number one killer. We aren't get people in to be looked after so they don't get to that level. In order to do that you have to be safe, keep people masked up, gowned up."
