17 July 2020
Dear Residents, Families and Friends
The past few weeks have seen a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases particularly in Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs. As a proud provider of aged care services in the western suburbs of Melbourne and regional Victoria, many of the Doutta Galla Homes are located in and near these high transmission areas. This is especially concerning to Doutta Galla and to all aged care providers.
Given the challenging nature of this situation, all of our Melbourne homes are restricting visits and we will continue to facilitate telephone calls, Skype, FaceTime and window visits where possible. We will ensure that visits with residents for compassionate or special circumstances are able to occur, and we continue to review the restrictions on a daily basis. Although regional Victoria does not have ‘stay at home’ orders in place, we have made the decision in the interest of our residents to continue limited visitations at our Shepparton home.
To date we have had three members of our workforce and one trainee test positive to COVID-19. The homes which have been impacted have received separate correspondence informing them of their particular circumstances.
Although we are in a dynamic environment, at the time of writing this update to you, no residents who have been tested have returned a positive result, and except for the people mentioned above no other staff member has tested positive. Fortunately, we have not seen the spread of the disease into our homes and staff are now wearing a face mask when working closely with our residents.
In the case of a resident or staff member testing positive to COVID-19, we have and will, activate our emergency response plan. This means we apply strict clinical, entry screening, cleaning, laundry and meal preparation control measures, including staff wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect our residents.
We will advise you immediately of any changes to your family member’s health status, however if you have an enquiry or concern about your family member, please contact the Manager of the home you or your family member lives in. In addition, we have set up an email address where you can send any questions, comments or concerns related to COVID-19.
The email address is: covid19questions@dgas.org.au.
I ask you all to follow the State Government ‘stay at home’ orders, particularly if you are in a COVID-19 hotspot. We want you to stay safe.
We will keep in touch on a regular basis to inform you of any changes to the situation. Thank you for your support during this challenging time.
Yours sincerely,
Vanda Iaconese
CEO
