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A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been established as a major occupational health and safety issue that compounds pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities such as access to basic health services. This is exacerbated in migrant farmworkers who are an essential workforce in maintaining food supply...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9624326/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36278764 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nursrep12040071 |
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author | Kabwe, Mwila Dittmer, Jennifer L. Oxford, Jaimee Eyres, Catina Thomas, Ancara Mahony, Andrew Bolam, Bruce |
author_facet | Kabwe, Mwila Dittmer, Jennifer L. Oxford, Jaimee Eyres, Catina Thomas, Ancara Mahony, Andrew Bolam, Bruce |
author_sort | Kabwe, Mwila |
collection | PubMed |
description | The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been established as a major occupational health and safety issue that compounds pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities such as access to basic health services. This is exacerbated in migrant farmworkers who are an essential workforce in maintaining food supply across the country. An outbreak occurred in a remote part of Victoria with limited access to healthcare resources. Existing relationships allowed the Loddon Mallee Public Health Unit to quickly engage farm management and local pathology services and provide cultural and language support. After contact-tracing and comprehensive clinical review, rather than isolate positive cases, those who were asymptomatic and willing to work continued to do so whilst negative workers were in quarantine. Outbreak management and public health actions were quickly implemented even when the nationwide state-testing and contact-tracing systems were experiencing significant strain due to the rapid escalation in case numbers. Despite a large outbreak (68/74 workers), the management of the outbreak allowed asymptomatic cases to perform their work so farm productivity remained uninterrupted. Cases’ health status was closely monitored, with no adverse outcomes in a high-risk population. COVID-19 negative workers safely quarantined away from positive cases until the closure of the outbreak. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9624326 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96243262022-11-02 A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia Kabwe, Mwila Dittmer, Jennifer L. Oxford, Jaimee Eyres, Catina Thomas, Ancara Mahony, Andrew Bolam, Bruce Nurs Rep Case Report The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been established as a major occupational health and safety issue that compounds pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities such as access to basic health services. This is exacerbated in migrant farmworkers who are an essential workforce in maintaining food supply across the country. An outbreak occurred in a remote part of Victoria with limited access to healthcare resources. Existing relationships allowed the Loddon Mallee Public Health Unit to quickly engage farm management and local pathology services and provide cultural and language support. After contact-tracing and comprehensive clinical review, rather than isolate positive cases, those who were asymptomatic and willing to work continued to do so whilst negative workers were in quarantine. Outbreak management and public health actions were quickly implemented even when the nationwide state-testing and contact-tracing systems were experiencing significant strain due to the rapid escalation in case numbers. Despite a large outbreak (68/74 workers), the management of the outbreak allowed asymptomatic cases to perform their work so farm productivity remained uninterrupted. Cases’ health status was closely monitored, with no adverse outcomes in a high-risk population. COVID-19 negative workers safely quarantined away from positive cases until the closure of the outbreak. MDPI 2022-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9624326/ /pubmed/36278764 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nursrep12040071 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Case Report Kabwe, Mwila Dittmer, Jennifer L. Oxford, Jaimee Eyres, Catina Thomas, Ancara Mahony, Andrew Bolam, Bruce A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia |
title | A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia |
title_full | A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia |
title_fullStr | A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia |
title_full_unstemmed | A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia |
title_short | A Novel Approach to Managing a COVID-19 Outbreak at a Farm in Outer Regional Victoria, Australia |
title_sort | novel approach to managing a covid-19 outbreak at a farm in outer regional victoria, australia |
topic | Case Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9624326/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36278764 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nursrep12040071 |
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