On Thursday 3 March 2022, public hospitals moved to ‘red’ under the System Alert and Response (SAR) framework and new directions came into effect to support the transition to Level 2 Public Health and Social Measures.
This will impact on the ability of hospitals to accept visitors into their facilities.
Yesterday I issued advice to limit the number of visitors coming into a facility to essential visitors only. After further discussions with the hospitals and noting restricting access to essential visitors remains the preferred option to limit the spread of COVID-19 within our hospitals, there is some scope to allow other visitors in under strict conditions.
Effective from Sunday 6 March 2022, 10.00am, the following applies:
Essential visitors
An ‘essential visitor’ includes someone who is a:
- birth partner
- nominated parent, guardian or carer of a child or a person with a disability
- support person for someone who is critically ill/end-of-life (this would include spouses, partners and other significant others, where appropriate).
Essential visitors can remain with the patient outside of standard visiting hours.
Other visitors
Other patients may have one visitor at a time during designated visiting hours. While a patient may have more than one visitor during a day, visitation is limited to one visitor per two-hour visiting period.
Requirements of both essential and other visitors to enter a hospital
All visitors are required to show proof of vaccination before visiting a hospital (case-by-case exemption will be considered); will be expected to undertake screening and risk assessment before entry and wear a surgical mask.
These measures are necessary while we have very high case numbers to ensure that we protect staff and vulnerable patients from COVID-19.
Please respect our front-line workers who have been asked to enforce these measures and understand that the measures are to protect everyone in the community.
If staff at a health service ask you to leave because you are not ‘essential’, please respect this as a direction and leave as requested.
Our health care workers and front-line staff are working hard to protect lives and restore health through this period of high cases, let’s help them to help us.
Dr Andrew Robertson
Chief Health Officer
