NSW Health has confirmed all four patients diagnosed with novel coronavirus(COVID-19) in NSW have now been discharged from hospital.
Executive Director Health Protection NSW, Dr Jeremy McAnulty said the outcomefollows the State’s recent breakthrough where NSW Health Pathology scientistscultivated the virus, and confirms NSW is addressing the global issue well.
“This is terrific news for the patients, clinicians, researchers and the NSW community,and we should applaud the efforts of everyone involved,” Dr McAnulty said.”NSW Health is extremely proud of its medical response to date with prompt, expertcare to all patients, a comprehensive screening program and extensive informationcampaign.”
Following the COVID-19 outbreak emerged in Wuhan, NSW Health initiated animmediate, state-wide medical response, with extensive follow-up of close contactsof confirmed cases and a comprehensive screening program at Sydney InternationalAirport.
The NSW Health response to COVID-19 is part of an existing framework formanaging emerging infectious diseases, including pandemic influenza, SARS andMERS in the past, which has been refined over many years.In addition to the immediate public information response and medical effort, NSWHealth launched the broad-scale public information campaign, “Find the Facts”.
“Through the NSW Health website and more broadly, we have providedcomprehensive and informative advice in multiple languages to communities acrossNSW,” Dr McAnulty said.
“I’d particularly like to acknowledge the work of the Chinese community, who haveworked hard to communicate the facts to people.
“We have issued twice daily statistics updates to media, we have held 16 pressconferences with front-line clinicians and epidemiologists, including dedicatedbriefings for Chinese-language press and issued almost 30 media releases.”
As of 9.30am today, a total of 883 people have been tested in NSW for COVID-19and 15,740 people have been screened at Sydney International Airport since 2February 2020.
COVID-19 is a notifiable disease under the Public Health Act 2010. Under thisrequirement, doctors and laboratories must report any suspected cases to NSWHealth
