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Brisbane Heat batter fighting Covid-19 as emergency nurse in Australia

Brisbane Heat Covid-19
by Wisden Staff 2 minute read

Brisbane Heat player Laura Harris, who’s featured in two Women’s Big Bash title wins, is serving as an emergency nurse at a Queensland hospital in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis.

The hospital work has required her to distance herself from her family, forcing her to ditch her season-end vacation in South Africa with fiancée and Heat teammate Delissa Kimmince, as her state grapples with the growing intensity of the global pandemic.

“I was in a corona clinic and there were about 300 people that came in, and we tested about half of them in that one day,” Harris told Australian Cricketers’ Association. “Now we’ve got a much stricter criteria. If anyone has a cough or cold symptoms, we act as if they could have it until it’s ruled out.”

“There are a lot of staff at work that are sharing photos of their own self-isolation at home from their kids and their families, which is a bit of a laugh but something that everyone feels necessary at this stage, not knowing how bad it can get.”

Harris was playing in the Women’s National Cricket League until the first week of February, representing Queensland Women. About a week before that, Australia had recorded its first Covid-19 case; since then, there have been over 5000 confirmed cases in the country, as well as 28 deaths.

Away from her family, Harris and her team are taking all precautions to stay clear of the virus, despite being in the vicinity of coronavirus positive cases through the day, 835 of which have been recorded in Queensland alone.

“Touch wood we don’t actually get it but we are doing all the right precautions at work, so at the end of the day if we do get it, it shouldn’t be from work, it should be from outside somewhere.”

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