Healthcare workers caught COVID-19 in Victoria in their thousands, so what went wrong?

In early 2020 during Victoria’s first wave, just one healthcare worker caught COVID-19 on the job in all of Western Health, a group of public hospitals, day hospitals and community-based health services in western Melbourne.

This nurse had cared for an abattoir worker who’d come in with a workplace injury and later tested positive for coronavirus, before the Cedar Meats outbreak was understood. No one else who was involved in the man’s care was infected.

Fast forward to the second wave, and 3,573 Victorian healthcare workers caught COVID-19, more than 7 in 10 of them at work.

While it makes sense that someone working directly with sick people has a higher than average chance of getting infected themselves, good infection control should…