VICTORIA has declared a code brown emergency for all Melbourne hospitals and six regional hospitals as the system buckles under COVID-19 admissions and staff shortages.<\/p>\n
A code brown is declared when additional capability and capacity needs to be mobilised to receive an influx of patients due to an external emergency.<\/p>\n
The order will mean some hospital staff may be recalled from leave and more emergency services will be deferred.<\/p>\n
The cancellation of leave will be negotiated between the hospital and staff.<\/p>\n
It will come into effect from midday on Wednesday and apply to all metro hospitals and six in the regions including Barwon, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton,\u00a0 Albury and Latrobe.<\/p>\n
The code brown declaration is expected to last from four to six weeks and will ease pressure on the system ahead of the expected peak of hospital cases.<\/p>\n
There are currently about 5000 health staff unavailable across the state after they tested positive for COVID-19 or were identified as close contacts.<\/p>\n
It comes as Victoria recorded 20,180 COVID-19 cases, 22 deaths and 1152 patients in hospital.<\/p>\n
The new infections confirmed by the health department on Tuesday include 11,747 from rapid antigen tests and 8433 from PCR tests.<\/p>\n
It is the second consecutive day case numbers have declined in the state.<\/p>\n
It brings the total number of active cases in the state to 235,035 – a fall of about 10,000 cases since Monday.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s patient numbers are a decrease of 77 on the previous day.<\/p>\n
The number of people in ICU has decreased by two to 127, though 43 people are now on ventilation, an increase of five.<\/p>\n
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on Monday said hospitalisation numbers were yet to peak, as he predicted that may not be reached for a month.<\/p>\n
He said there was a lag of about two weeks between case numbers and hospital admissions, and three weeks for that to translate to ICU figures.<\/p>\n
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