All are self-isolating at home
Translated by Thomas Ansell
As reported by the Omrop Fryslân, five staff members at the enormous MCL Hospital in Leeuwarden have been confirmed to have the Coronavirus. The five staff members were part of the surgical nursing team at the hospital.
All five people are now at home, in quarantine, and all of their colleagues and patients will be tested for infection. Contact tracing is also underway. After testing 160 staff and patients, there have been no further positive test results.
Frits Mostert, a spokesperson for the hospital, said that it’s not clear how the doctors and nurses became infected. “At the moment there’s a wide-scale contact tracing operation ongoing”, he said, “the results of which are not yet known”.
Due to the small outbreak, the MCL has decided to halt any visits to its surgical department. Operations that may have resulted in the patient ending up in the surgical nursing department have been postponed, and each patient has received a personal letter explaining the circumstances.
“It’s really annoying news”, said Mostert, “for both staff members and the patients in the department. Limited visits are still allowed in some other departments, but certainly not this one.”
“I was not surprised”, said Margreet de Graaf, from the GGD Fryslân. “It might sound strange, but it is to be expected- it reminds us that the virus hasn’t entirely disappeared. We must keep adhering to the various rules and not get complacent. It is likely to resurface again somewhere.”
According to De Graaf, it is neither safer nor less safe to visit a hospital than before the Coronavirus outbreak.
