Eleven staff at a South Australian hospital have become unwell and a dozen emergency hospital beds have been closed, after the accidental release of an “outdoor insect repellent” inside the facility.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred at Flinders Medical Centre, one of Adelaide’s largest public hospitals, around 2am.<\/p>\n
Authorities say no patients have become unwell, with 11 staff reporting “serious to minor” symptoms after the mosquito repellent was accidentally released.<\/p>\n
One staff member is in a serious but stable condition and has been admitted to hospital, with two being treated in the emergency department.<\/p>\n
SA Health said the substance was a mosquito repellent, and that ambulances were being redirected to balance the load “across the system”.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Robyn Lawrence said no patients had become sick, and that the staff who were unwell had suffered “predominantly respiratory symptoms”, including difficulty breathing.<\/p>\n
“My understanding is that it’s an outdoor mosquito fogger-type repellent, like a spray, as I understand it,” Dr Lawrence said.<\/p>\n
“Staff, as they do, were going through somebody’s belongings to make sure there was nothing in there that was a safety risk to the patient when they were left alone.<\/p>\n
“In doing that, the lid was knocked off the repellent and it released itself.”<\/p>\n
Dr Lawrence said the Metropolitan Fire Service had attended the scene and had been on site for several hours.<\/p>\n
“They’ve been assisting the staff and ensuring that the area has been cleaned appropriately and trying to determine why there are ongoing symptoms occurring in the staff,” she said.<\/p>\n
“They’re doing a range of atmospheric tests of the air but also all of the surfaces and the equipment in those zones to make sure nothing’s left contaminated.”<\/p>\n
Dr Lawrence described what had occurred as an “unfortunate accident” and said there was currently no timeline for when it would be safe to reopen beds.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eleven staff at a South Australian hospital have become unwell and a dozen emergency hospital beds have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[28432,395,10611,821,1046,5020,57427,39,57426,14003,32655,7738],"class_list":["post-56743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-adelaide","tag-accidental","tag-adelaide","tag-centre","tag-ed","tag-emergency","tag-flinders","tag-fmc","tag-hospital","tag-insect-repellent","tag-medical","tag-patients","tag-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}