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Ten ambulance workers in Northern Ireland tested positive for coronavirus after a golf trip.
All affected staff members work at the Craigavon ambulance station in Co Armagh.
The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) said 10 Southern Division staff members attending a social event outside of work had tested positive for Covid-19.
As a result, six other staff members who were identified as close contacts of affected staff members have also had to isolate themselves and are unable to work.
“The situation is being handled in accordance with public health guidelines and NIAS procedures,” said a spokesman.
NIAS executive director Michael Bloomfield told BBC Radio Ulster that none of the ambulance workers with Covid-19 were seriously ill and he expected most of them to return to work very soon.
He said that at the time of this trip the current regulations stipulated that a maximum of 15 people could meet outdoors. “They didn’t break that,” he said.
Bloomfield said an internal NIAS review had “established that it was a community broadcast, it wasn’t hired through work.
“We believe the first person to test positive on September 13, we believe they contracted it through a family member,” he said.
“As a result of several staff members being absent together for several days” on a “golf trip,” he said, the infection was transmitted to the other members of the group. “Very quickly, several others tested positive,” he said.
The golf trip is reported to have been to the Republic of Ireland.
Of the 15 people on the trip, Bloomfield said, 12 were ambulance personnel. Ten of them tested positive for Covid-19 and two did not.
He said only one person had returned to work after the trip before subsequently testing positive. That individual was in contact with four colleagues, who are self-isolating, but no patients.
“There was no contact with patients as a result of these staff testing positive,” he said.
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