Five Critical Care Nurses Infected with COVID-19
Landspítali National University Hospital, Fossvogur. Photo: Morgunblaðið/Sigurður Bogi Sævarsson
Five critical care nurses, who work at Landspítali National University Hospital in Fossvogur, have contracted COVID-19. This was announced at a press conference yesterday, mbl.is reports. All of the nurses were on call together, and all are now in quarantine.
As of yesterday, there were 58 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Iceland, ten of which had been transmitted locally.
Two of the nurses contracted the disease on a ski trip abroad, and one of them showed up for work for one call, which is how the other three are believed to have been infected. The nurse did not attend to patients that day.
This has affected the operation of the critical care unit. The unit has been split up, and the number of available beds has been reduced.
The Landspítali Nursing Board issued a statement on Facebook last night, stressing that the nurse who showed up for work after a trip abroad did not arrive from a defined risk area for contracting the virus. Therefore, it was “perfectly normal [for the nurse] to return to work, as people always do when they return from a vacation,” the statement reads.
Due to COVID-19, all in-patient wards at Landspítali have been closed to guests around the clock, except in exceptional cases. This also applies to the emergency ward at Landspítali in Fossvogur.
