As all states and territories move towards opening borders and adopting a ‘living with Covid’ approach, there is understandable concern about how just what impact this might have in rural and remote communities.
Many regional areas have significantly lower vaccination rates than in the cities and towns and there is also more limited access to medical facilities.
No one knows for sure how things are going to play out, but it is a reasonable assumption that smaller communities will see Covid outbreaks.
And that is the scenario that is being planned for in Queensland and other jurisdictions where the virus has yet to take hold.
The ABC reports that the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) and the LifeFlight aeromedical rescue have already transported 88 suspected or confirmed Covid patients in Queensland since the pandemic began.
But with the state’s border rules set to relax next month, that number could skyrocket as the pandemic reaches rural areas for the first time.
RFDS chief medical officer Katie Clift told the ABC that the organisation was watching how New South Wales Health worked to treat isolated communities, particularly Indigenous residents who may be reluctant to be airlifted to a distant hospital.
“They took a whole load of caravans into a community to provide safe accommodation where people could isolate from each other,” she said. “It’s a very bespoke solution for that community … they all stayed in the land that they want to stay in, yet they were managed in a safe way.”
Until the border restrictions relax on or before December 17, Dr Clift is unsure exactly what will unfold.
“I feel we’re ready, we’re well prepared,” she said. “But yeah, there is a little bit of a sense of anticipation and what might happen next.”
Dr Clift told the ABC that the RFDS had detailed modelling on how it could function if its aeromedical team were infected.
“If we have Covid widespread in the community, some of our staff will be affected by that,” she said. “We have got some strategies in place to model what it would look like if a proportion of our staff were unable to work for periods of time, and how we might keep the service operational … it’s our absolute priority to maintain to the areas that rely on RFDS for medical care and for aeromedical retrieval.”
