Albury Wodonga Health staff redeployed and ranks bolstered for COVID

AWH said services like dental, community allied health and pain management had been reduced and were only accepting emergencies, not new appointments.

Local Public Health Unit executive director Lucie Shanahan said 135 staff, predominantly from allied health, had been redeployed.

"We've recently redeployed staff into testing and also looking at ensuring that we have enough medical staff, nursing staff and allied health staff to make sure we can keep staffing the wards and keep the hospitals working over the next few weeks," she said.

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Ms Shanahan said three extra staff from Melbourne would start working at Wodonga's three testing clinics from Friday morning.

"The key thing for us is that we can rest our staff," she said.

"Some of our staff have worked seven, eight, nine or ten days in a row, they've worked extended hours, they really have gone above and beyond to keep the community safe and provide the best possible response.

"With the additional staff coming up through the Department of Health, it means we can actually rotate those staff in and rotate some of our staff out to give them a rest before they come back onto duty again."

Ms Shanahan said a number of new staff had come on board after the health unit put out a recruitment call for testing, vaccination and contact tracing staff a few weeks ago.

"It's been a really fantastic outcome to bring some new people into the organisation and to be able to bolster the ranks and our workforce across those critical areas," she said.

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