BELGA

No new admissions due to coronavirus outbreak at a hospital in Mol

More than twenty staff and doctors on the geriatric ward at the Heilig Hart Hospital in Mol (Antwerp province) have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The shortage of staff that this has caused means that no new patients can be admitted to the hospital until at Monday at the earliest. The virus is believed to have made its way onto the ward through visitors.

Patients that normally would have been admitted to the hospital will be taken to hospitals in the neighbouring towns of Herentals, Geel or Turnhout instead. However, patients already at the Heilig Hart hospital won’t have to be transferred.

Rudy Van Ballaer of Care Network Kempen told VRT News that “There was an outbreak on the geriatric ward and more than 20 people have become infected. This is a combination of patients, doctors and other staff. This means that staff from other wards are having to come and help”.

The question is where have the infections come from? This is now the subject of an investigation. However, the belief is that the culprits can be found among visitors to the ward.

Mr Van Ballaer told VRT News that "We suspect that this is the case and this is striking as it comes despite all the measures taken and messages send out to the population about not going to hospital to visit a patient if you have symptoms. This causes problems for an entire hospital and an entire region just because people weren’t careful. This really isn’t ok".  

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