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How we're protecting our community, in line with health advice

1 September 2021
University of Sydney responds to recent media coverage
The University issued a statement today, following a News Corp story that reported concerns from some staff in our Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

The safety of our staff, students and broader community is always our first priority and that is why we have strict COVID-safety measures in place, in line with the current Public Health Orders and NSW Health advice.

If any staff or students have any concerns, we encourage them to let us know so we can work together to address them, as we have been doing throughout the pandemic.

Currently we are only allowing our most critical activities to be conducted on campus. This includes staffing the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, which is an essential service care provider, to ensure vital veterinary services remain available – as well as clinical placements that provide essential training for our final year veterinary students. 

We hope these students will soon be able to graduate, to help address the severe shortage of veterinarians in Australia today.

Our COVID-safety measures

Like all essential service care providers, we are working hard to provide care in the pandemic. We are also working to protect our amazing staff and students and prevent any cases of COVID-19 in the Hospital. We have managed this so far but do not take it for granted.

Safety measures at the Hospital currently include:

  • Contactless consulting, introduced on 28 June;
  • Staff meeting owners at the front door to receive or discharge their pets, with owners not allowed to enter the Hospital;
  • Strict social distancing and appropriate PPE enforced throughout the facility;
  • Remote teaching where possible, with all in-hospital experiences for junior year students suspended since the start of Semester 2, to limit numbers of people in the Hospital at any one time.

Since 12 July, we’ve also required the Service NSW QR code to check in to all University buildings and venues, including the Hospital, to support NSW Health contact tracing.

We’ve also strongly encouraged members of our community to book their COVID-19 vaccination, including holding a special one-day COVID-19 vaccination clinic for all our students.

We only allow the Hospital to operate while we are able to adhere to the current Public Health Orders; if that were to change, more of our students’ learning will move online and we will conduct intensive face-to-face teaching once the Hospital can be safely re-opened for clinical activities.

More details on the Hospital’s COVID-19 response plan is here: https://www.uvths.com.au/general-practice/covid19-response-plan/