Local residential aged care facilities, Blue Haven Bonaira and Uniting Mayflower Gerringong, have managed to contain the spread of COVID-19 and maintain their standard of care during this stressful period for the sector.

Uniting Mayflower Residential Aged Care Home has told The Bugle that while a total of 15 residents (out of 120) and 10 employees (including agency staff) have tested positive since 28 December, there are currently no active cases.

“During outbreaks, to the extent possible, residents are cohorted to households or separated across different parts of the home,” said a spokesperson.

The Blue Haven Bonaira Aged Care Facility reports that two residents (out of 122) and 18 staff tested positive since the precautionary lockdown was imposed on 2 January. The residents were placed in isolation in their rooms and provided dedicated support. Affected staff isolated at home.

There are currently no active cases amongst residents, and four staff still recovering at home.

One administrative member of the Blue Haven Community Services team also tested positive on 23 December, resulting in the office being closed and all staff isolating at home for 14 days.

Both providers are cautiously optimistic that their efforts to restrict the spread have been successful.

A therapy horse visiting Blue Haven Care last year

Blue Haven Bonaira is implementing a staged re-opening.

“We want to help family and friends visit our residents where possible. And we know that many are especially keen to do so, given the restrictions we had to place over the festive and holiday season, but we are balancing this against the high-level of COVID-19 transmission in the wider community,” says Kiama Council's CEO Jane Stroud.

“While most people with COVID-19 make a full recovery, our residents are much more vulnerable due to their age and often chronic health conditions.

“I want to assure our residents and their loved ones that we are doing all we can and we’ll keep you up-to-date as we manage your health and safety.”

Council's CEO, Jane Stroud

Family and friends need to book their visit to Blue Haven (one visitor per resident per day, between 10-2pm), ensure they are fully vaccinated against influenza and COVID-19 and take a temperature, symptom and RAT test on arrival. Meeting outdoors is being encouraged.

Care and compassionate visits can be made at any time.

Uniting says they have developed a protocol based on the industry code for services experiencing an outbreak, to safely enable visits for residents who rely on regular visitors to receive essential support.   

“We also use Zoom calls to connect people as much as we can to keep families and loved ones connected and are also ensuring that we communicate regularly with family members whose loved ones are in a service experiencing an outbreak,” said the spokesperson. 

Given their national operations, Uniting is advocating a revised national approach to responding to outbreaks in residential aged care, which balances infection control with the other important health and wellbeing needs of residents.    

“Currently we must apply different approaches in different locations as each Public Health Unit is thinking differently. Ideally there would be one, evidenced based 'best way' for the circumstances at hand,” said the spokesperson. 

At Blue Haven, all residents who have opted in have been double vaccinated, with 87 per cent having already received their booster. Uniting says most of their residents are double vaccinated, with 75 per cent of residents having been boosted nationally.

Half of Blue Haven staff have already received their boosters, and Uniting is strongly encouraging all of its employees to have their booster shots.

“Given recent changes to reduce the time between the primary vaccination and the booster to three months and the impending mandating of boosters for employees, we expect the rate of boosters amongst our employees to significantly increase in February,” said a Uniting spokesperson.