ADF deployed to Victoria’s straining hospitals

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The past fortnight has seen the number of COVID cases presented at Victoria’s hospitals and ICU departments more than double:

To relieve the strain, Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel have been brought in to help drive ambulances. Triage tents will also be erected outside of Melbourne’s hospitals to help manage patient flow:

For the first time in Ambulance Victoria’s history, two paramedics will no longer be deployed in each ambulance. In a bid to improve response times, crews will instead be split, and a single paramedic will be joined by a driver from the Australian Defence Force, St John Ambulance Australia, State Emergency Service or student paramedics…

“It’s something we would have liked not to have done, but that is the state of the nation, we’re in such dire circumstances we have to do it,” he said…

Associate Professor Stephenson said demand for ambulances had climbed to record levels and the service had in the last two weeks reported four of its five busiest days in history, with similar demand to the deadly thunderstorm asthma event in 2016.

He said it was now taking an average of around 50 minutes for people to be offloaded from their stretcher after arriving at hospital, a 20-minute increase from late 2019, before the pandemic began…

Modelling showing that paramedics will likely need to cater for an extra 100 COVID-19 patients a day by next week…

Ambulance patients face waits of up to 10 hours to get emergency care…

Several health sources, speaking to The Age on the condition of anonymity… said some intensive care units in Victoria were extremely full on Sunday night due to high numbers of coronavirus patients needing critical care.

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Hospitalisations lag cases by around four weeks, so with Melbourne’s cases exploding, the worst it yet to come.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.