Strong planning leads QAS through COVID-19 and weather extremes in early 2022

As the Christmas edition of Insight was published, the Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) was preparing for a busy start to 2022 with anticipated COVID-19 peaks combined with the return of some major events across the state, Emma Sayle writes.

Despite COVID-19 cases rising in Southeast Queensland (3318 cases recorded on the 31 December 2021), the return of New Year’s Eve celebrations saw an increased focus on mass gathering events and their potential impact on QAS demand.

These events, heralding the start of a fresh new year, represented the first ‘unrestricted’ celebrations since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The recent spread of the Omicron variant and release of interstate travel restrictions highlighted the need for an ‘all hazards’ approach to managing the event.

Planning was completed regionally with an overarching QAS State Event Plan outlining the enhanced strategic coordination arrangements, risk assessments and event incident action plans.

QAS planning established key accountabilities for executive, management, and supervisory staff to ensure the safety and welfare of QAS frontline staff, the community, and stakeholders.

NYE celebrations were successfully navigated across the state, and like so many years prior, the QAS once again showed its depth and experience in major event response.

The QAS executives would like to acknowledge the work completed in the lead up and during the 2021-2022 NYE event and thank all QAS staff who worked to see in the new year.

As the state prepared for a potential COVID-19 peak in mid-to-late January, the QAS was activating preparedness measures. QAS was bolstering services, enhancing staff numbers, and activating planning strategies in preparation for any impacts on service delivery.

In January the omicron strain of COVID-19 arrived in Queensland.

QAS planning successfully covered this anticipated effect on our workforce through staff furloughing (sickness or carer responsibility), as well as the potential increase in workload demand.

The QAS introduced several strategies to further support the broader health system, boost available resources and meet the potential increased risks experienced through any rise in demand on the health system. These included:

• Offload Paramedics (OLP) to increase paramedic availability to maintain patient safety on the ramp

• Infield Triage Officers (IFTO) to support patient assessment and prioritise lower acuity cases

• Enhanced supervision at HHS facilities to support interagency collaboration, OLP strategies and offload strategies.

• Enhanced load sharing activities using appropriate resources.

• Increased resources into the QAS Clinical Hub to provide low acuity case medical review.

• The onboarding of new staff providing extra capacity throughout the state.

As the state resets to a ‘living with COVID-19’ strategy, the QAS will continue to ensure risks are mitigated, and pandemic-driven demand surge can be managed regardless of the primary cause.

While future COVID-19 strains and waves certainly remain a risk to QAS, with the added pressure of the annual winter flu season, we remain prepared for the anticipated demand surge that may come.

February and March’s severe weather, floods, and heatwaves provided additional complexities to the ongoing COVID-19 environment.

The QAS has a strong reputation for natural disaster planning and response. The serviceagain displayed the resilience,preparedness and dedication we have become so renowned for.

Using lessons and experiences from past events across Queensland, including the 2010-2011 and 2013 Brisbane floods, the QAS immediately activated an Incident Management Team (IMT) and deployed its State Response Teams (SRT).

Regions across the state supported the flooding response to evacuation centres, refuge shelters, business-as-usual operations and other community response and recovery arrangements.

The Southeast Queensland rain and severe flooding event in February-March saw parts of Brisbane receiving close to a year’s annual rainfall in just a few days.

The “rain bomb” responsible for this record-breaking rainfall and flooding saw challenges across the system. In the lead up to the event, the QAS participated in Whole of Government planning arrangements ensuring our response met the required community demand and council arrangements.

QAS Commissioner Craig Emery took on the Incident Controller role leading our response, which was coordinated through the State Operations Coordination Centre (SOCC) and focused on intelligence gathering, informed emergency management planning and collaboration to ensure QAS matched Queenslanders’ health needs during this time.

The availability of information through local and district disaster management groups and other government information sharing mechanisms meant QAS was provided with modelling and predictions to support the early activation of additional resources and promote dynamic deployment.

QAS staff are commended in their support to these events, not only in operations but throughout business units supporting frontline requirements.

Queensland’s February- March extreme weather and floods also brought tragedy to our communities with 14 lives lost and around 15,000 properties flooded or water-damaged.

On 15 March 2022, Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk announced the Inspector-General of Emergency Management would commence a review, South East Queensland (SEQ) Rainfall and Flooding Event.

Post event reviews highlight good practice and ensure improvement opportunities are identified across the system.

As part of our current emergency management processes the QAS is also conducting an internal post event review to identify best practice for QAS and this will also support the broader review across Government.