A PORTER has tested positive for coronavirus at Glasgow’s super hospital.
The employee of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital is self-isolating after contracting the virus last week.
However it is understood more than 20 of their colleagues have also had to self-isolate as a result, to ensure they do not contract the virus or pass it on to patients.
Replacement staff have had to be drafted in to maintain the normal running of the £842m facility, with a source from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde confirming the hospital management had been “frantically trying to get agency staff to back-fill the posts”.
They explained: “Around 20 porters at the main QEUH are off sick because of a porter being positive. They are frantically trying to get agency workers to backfill. They are off sick because they are self-isolating as a precaution.”
A spokeswoman from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde confirmed that a number of staff had to self-isolate after a positive case was detected at the super-hospital.
However, they confirmed no investigation was ongoing, and services at the hospital were running normally.
She said: “Public Health are not investigating any incident involving our portering staff at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and the service is operating as normal.”
Portering staff are responsible for moving patients between areas of the hospital, taking clean linen to wards, collecting waste and transporting medical equipment. They are also required to transport samples and documentation.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here