Over the weekend, Premier Daniel Andrews announced that Victoria has enacted a state of disaster and from 6pm Sunday the 2nd of August, the state would enter stage four restrictions including a curfew from 8pm to 5am each night. These new measures come just two weeks after face masks became mandatory for people living in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire – a requirement nurses on the frontline of COVID-19 believe there shouldn’t be any complaints about.
Hear all about the new mask mandates in Victoria below:
ABC reports that nurses working in intensive care and emergency departments around Melbourne are frustrated to hear members of the public complaining about wearing masks.
“Seeing people in the community complain about their masks that they have to wear for half an hour to go to the shops is a little bit disheartening when our masks actually cause us physical injuries, just to keep us and our patients safe,” nurse Mel Pearson told 7.30.
“We’re dehydrated because we can’t drink all the time,” she explained. “It’s a lot harder to just go pee if we want to….We have pressure injuries on our forehead and bruising on our chins and our noses.”
Nurse Pearson’s colleague Jack Baum said, “for our whole shift at work we put on all this [PPE] to keep everyone safe when we’re treating them, and the public are just asked to chuck on a mask when they go to the supermarket for 20 minutes.”
“That’s a bit annoying when you see people complaining about that,” he added.
It’s no surprise Pearson and Baum find mask complaints irritating – especially considering the risk these healthcare workers take going to work everyday. According to ABC News, a young Melbourne doctor was recently admitted to intensive care after contracting COVID-19 at work.
Apparently, more than 1,000 healthcare workers in Victoria have caught coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic with many calling for better Personal Protection Equipment at hospitals and medical centres.
There have been 687 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in Victoria over the past 24 hours, with a total of 208 deaths as a result of the virus.
It’s more important than ever to follow the current rules and restrictions, but just as crucial to maintain perspective and leave those COVID-19 mask complaints at the door.
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