AS lockdown restrictions ease across regional Victoria, people are being encouraged to keep up their COVID safe habits.<\/p>\n
Director of Loddon Mallee Public Health Unit and deputy chief medical officer at Bendigo Health, Dr Casey Nottage, said the recent coronavirus outbreak is a reminder of the importance of actions like hand hygiene and social distancing to control sudden spreading of the virus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is easy to think that we have gotten rid of coronavirus otherwise, and it is easy to not be in that really heightened state that we were in right in the middle of that second wave and that\u2019s human nature,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think what the last week has shown us is at any time the contact tracers might be ringing to say that you\u2019ve been at an exposure sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the recent outbreak of COVID variants in Victoria, including exposure sites in Bendigo and at Axedale, and detections of the virus in local wastewater, Dr Nottage urged people to maintain the practices that have been drummed into us from the start of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to keep those basic things up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo social distancing where we can, hand hygiene, wearing masks when those rules are put in place with that heightened risk, that idea of scanning in and QR coding and knowing where you\u2019ve been so that when those calls come, from the contact tracing point of view, the more information we have, the quicker we can get on top of things.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not to say that we can\u2019t go and live our lives, but we have to go and live it in this new idea of COVID normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just really important that we just keep on top of it and it\u2019s going to be our actions that keep us and our communities safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Nottage said hand hygiene in particular should be practiced to safeguard against a number of other public health concerns too.<\/p>\n
\u201cHand hygiene isn\u2019t just for coronavirus. It\u2019s for flu, it\u2019s for all of those other viruses, so I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll see an end to hand hygiene. It\u2019s a vital public health strategy just broadly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about making it a habit. You don\u2019t think twice about putting your seatbelt on, it\u2019s an automatic action that we do but that didn\u2019t happen from the day we said \u2018let\u2019s start wearing seatbelts\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to think of hand hygiene like that and we have to just work to making it that automatic habit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AS lockdown restrictions ease across regional Victoria, people are being encouraged to keep up their COVID safe habits. Director of Loddon Mallee Public Health Unit and deputy chief medical officer at Bendigo Health, Dr Casey Nottage, said the recent coronavirus outbreak is a reminder of the importance of actions like hand hygiene and social distancing […]<\/p>\n