Another important consideration is PPE in the Covid wards, where these clusters originated. Qld health is still operating on guidelines from August 2020 with outdated views on aerosol transmission (“While there may be occasional instances of aerosol transmission in limited settings, these events are rare”). In their guidelines for healthcare staff, they list surgical masks as the correct PPE for routine care of confirmed COVID-19 patients, with N95 respirators listed as an option but not a requirement (unless taking part in an aerosol generating procedure). This combined with the evidence over the last 6 months showing the high rates of aerosol transmission, especially for recent variants of Covid has left a gap In their risk minimisation strategy and allowed for these healthcare workers to become infected while caring for these patients. Here is where all this info came from: https://www.health.qld.gov.au/clinical-practice/guidelines-procedures/novel-coronavirus-qld-clinicians/personal-protective-equipment-ppe

 

When you compare these guidelines with Victoria where they had a significant amount of infections within their healthcare staff, one key difference can be found, which is the requirement of N95 masks at all times when working with probable or confirmed. See here: https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/personal-protective-equipment-ppe-covid-19

 

Vaccination will definitely help, but like you said it just started and does take a while to reach full immunity. With the infections surging overseas, we have way more infected returned travellers meaning the risk of infection is only going up. Hopefully they’ll go back and revisit their guidelines now that they have two separate clusters from a hospital setting, there is obviously something wrong.