COVID update: RATs, contact tracing and cleaning programs

Distribution Date - 3 February 2022

RATs, contact tracing and cleaning programs

Over 6000 people tuned in to yesterday’s COVID operational livestream. If you missed it, you can watch the replay below.

Health update

NSW Health has released an updated risk assessment guide for the workplace. The main change relates to high-risk contacts and we are working through what this means for us.

Events and stakeholder engagement

We’ve received lots of questions about hosting events and stakeholder engagement. Unless the activity is business critical, these shouldn’t go ahead. If it is business critical, a risk assessment needs to be carried out. Please talk to your WHS business partner who can guide you on this.

RATs and surveillance testing

RAT supply has improved over the last week and distribution is underway to our 15 health surveillance pilot sites. In the next few weeks, our RAT program will expand to include self-testing kits for priority assessed roles. If you’re not sure if your role is included in the pilot, please speak to your leader.

Contact tracing

We are currently developing a QR check-in system to bolster and automate our existing contact tracing. This will be available at all our offices and worksites later this month and will enable us to automatically notify people when they have been at the same location on the same day as a COVID-positive case. Read more about our existing contact tracing system.

Cleaning programs

We recently completed an independent review of our current suite of cleaning protocols. The report is being worked through now and any planned enhancements to our cleaning procedures will be communicated shortly after.

We are also looking at ventilation and HVAC systems to identify if there are any additional controls we can apply to our workspaces and assets. More on this soon.

Reminders

As per advice from the NSW Government, we recommend you continue working from home until the end of February, if you can.

You're encouraged to get your booster as soon as you’re eligible – for most of us, that’s three months after your second dose. Regardless of the time of your vaccination appointment, you can also apply to be paid two hours base pay (in addition to normal hours) to attend your vaccination appointment. Complete the Payment of COVID-19 Vaccine Request Form.