Anglicare’s Newmarch House records 30 cases of Covid-19 after a member of staff worked for six days with mild symptoms

Thirty people at the Anglicare Newmarch House aged care facility in New South Wales have tested positive for Covid-19, a doubling in the number of cases associated with the facility overnight.

On Friday morning an Anglicare spokesman said 10 staff and 20 residents at the western Sydney facility had the virus, a marked increase from the six staff and nine residents diagnosed on Thursday.

“Anglicare has deployed a specially trained team of staff assigned to care for the residents who have tested positive,” the spokesman said. “This team is wearing full personal protective equipment, follow strict infection control procedures and care solely for these residents. Anglicare staff and management have been greatly distressed for our residents and their loved ones at Newmarch House.”

An outbreak occurred in the home after a staff member worked for six days without knowing she had the virus, as she had only mild symptoms of a sore throat and running nose. Currently the federal government advice is that health and aged care workers can be tested if they develop fever or respiratory symptoms specifically. This guidance is the same for NSW.

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On Friday the NSW chief health officer, Kerry Chant, said testing would be expanded to any aged care worker with symptoms of illness in the home, even without fever or respiratory symptoms.

“A strong focus on anyone who works with vulnerable people, aged care worker, health care workers, even with minimal symptoms … please come forward to testing,” Chant said. All residents and staff of Newmarch House have now been tested, with results pending. Some states, including Victoria and Western Australia, have gone beyond federal guidelines.

Victoria now says anyone with fever or chills, or acute respiratory infection that is characterised by cough, sore throat or shortness of breath can be tested, and testing is also recommended for people with new onset of other clinical symptoms consistent with Covid-19 if they are close contacts of a confirmed case or have returned from overseas in the past 14 days. Headache, myalgia, runny or stuffy nose, anosmia (losing sense of smell), nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea are all considered clinical symptoms.

A NSW Health spokesman said the state had not diverged from federal guidelines. The health department was prioritising testing in areas where there was a small number of cases of community transmission but the source had not been identified, the spokesman said.

“There is no test that can predict whether or not someone will become unwell after exposure to a confirmed case and therefore testing on people with no symptoms can often lead to false negative results,” he said.

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“For this reason, NSW Health only tests people with symptoms of Covid-19 such as fever, sore throat, a dry cough or other respiratory symptoms. People living or working in areas identified as having an elevated risk of community transmission are encouraged to have a test.”

Chant said earlier in the week that the staff member of Newmarch House who first had the virus there was “distraught” and “mortified” by the situation. On Thursday the NSW Health Services Union supported the health worker after the state health minister Brad Hazzard accused her of “not doing the right thing”. He made the comments despite the premier Gladys Berejiklian telling reporters: “I feel for her and want to tell her directly she did nothing wrong.”

“All of us empathise with her,” Berejiklian said. “She did the right thing. As soon as she realised she could have been in contact with someone with the illness, she got tested.”

All residents in the home have been isolated in their rooms since Sunday.

Matthew Fowler’s 87 year old father is in Newmarch House and returned a negative test for Covid-19 earlier in the week. But Fowler said he had been retested on Friday along with all of the other residents.

Fowler said he was not angry at the worker who initially had the virus, but said he wanted infection control procedures at the home reviewed. He has made a complaint to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.

There have been 29 new cases of Covid-19 across NSW since Thursday, including the 15 additional cases identified from Newmarch House. A seven-week-old baby boy is among the new infections in the state. The total cases in NSW is 2,926, including 26 patients in intensive care, 19 of whom are ventilated.