Quarantine Facility Model of Care Toolbox

The COVID-19 pandemic public health strategy to reduce community transmission in Australia included unprecedented use of quarantine facilities to separate those at risk of having the infection and those infected with the virus from the rest of the community. No standardised approach to quarantine facilities existed resulting in different models of care emerging across the country. The Northern Territory (NT) Howard Springs Quarantine Facility was a large-scale quarantine and isolation operation which hosted over 33,000 repatriated, domestic, international, and humanitarian residents with zero COVID-19 transmission recorded from residents to staff for the duration of its operation. The facility was deemed the gold standard model of care and the aim of this project was to distil the important elements of that model of care into an evidence-based tool kit for future use as an open access, online resource. The toolkit was a result of intense data and information analysis including resident, staff and leadership surveys, policies and procedures and results of audits of the facility during its operation.