Update from Royal Surrey on staff incident
On Friday 2 October, 22 of our staff members socialised together away from work, without adequate social distancing in place. Two of them subsequently received positive Covid-19 test results, meaning that this was classed as a Covid-19 outbreak by Public Health England, involving our staff. An ‘outbreak’ occurs whenever two or more cases are found with links. This took place more than two weeks ago and a full track and trace of any patient contact has been completed. No risk to patients was identified due to the swift isolation of staff involved and correct use of PPE where any contact had taken place. The incident was reported appropriately and we proactively alerted all of our staff and reminded them of the need to follow Government guidance at all times.
There has been no disruption to our services for patients and no appointments or procedures have been cancelled as a result of this. Our services continue to run safely and patients can use these confidently and attend planned appointments and procedures.
Dr Mark Evans, Deputy Medical Director, said:
“Protecting our patients is our priority and we are committed to ensuring that all of our staff follow government guidance. This incident took place outside of work and has been reported appropriately, and there was no disruption to our services for patients. Our focus now is on learning from this incident and continuing to care for all of our patients and staff during these unprecedented times.”