What advice does HSE have for health care workers?
HSE has the following advice, which complements that provided by the Health Protection Agency (formerly issued by the Public Health Laboratory Service). If a patient fitting the definition for a suspect or probable case of SARS is admitted to the hospital, clinicians should notify infection control personnel immediately. A risk assessment must be done for all work with the person who has suspect or probable SARS, and appropriate control measures put in place to reduce the risk of any healthcare worker who comes into contact with the patient being exposed to the SARS virus. Until the cause and route of transmission are known, in addition to standard precautions (sometimes known as universal precautions), infection control measures for inpatients should include: • Airborne precautions, eg • Either an isolation room with negative pressure relative to the surrounding area or a single room with own bathroom facilities, and • Use of FFP3 filtering masks conforming to EN 149:2001 for persons
