The New South Wales health minister has denied “covering up” a deadly fungal outbreak at one of Australia’s largest hospitals, saying it was not publicised to avoid “unnecessarily scaring people”.
The cluster of infections caused by aspergillus, a common mould, killed two patients and left four others unwell in the Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) hospital’s transplant unit in late 2025.
The opposition accused the government of a “cover-up” after it publicly revealed the outbreak at the inner-Sydney hospital for the first time on Wednesday, after being forced to share documents under parliamentary order.
The health minister, Ryan Park, on Friday said NSW Health had prioritised informing patients and families of the outbreak.
“We wanted to strike a balance between not unnecessarily scaring people,” Park told reporters.
“There is in no way a sense of cover-up … we were telling hundreds of people.”
RPA staff in December raised concern at the cluster in the transplant unit, after six patients developed infections in eight weeks, the documents show.
One of those patients had died on 5 November and another on 19 November, Guardian Australia has been told.
Park said his office was notified on 24 December and NSW Health assembled an expert panel led by the state’s chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant.
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That panel guided the health response and encouraged the government to tell patients, families, visitors and staff, rather than the general public, Park said.
“I can see how people can look back and say, ‘well, you should have just told everybody’ – well, an expert panel said that this is what we should be doing in terms of information,” Park said.
Hospital staff raised concern at being left to tell patients themselves, minutes of a January meeting show, to which health district officials said communication had been “difficult” as they had not yet confirmed the cause of infections.
NSW Health briefings noted a public statement on the issue would attract media attention.
Sarah Mitchell, the NSW shadow minister for health, on Friday said Chris Minns’s government should have disclosed the “shocking” revelations.
“The Minns Labor government has covered this up for the past three months,” Mitchell said in a statement.
“The staff, patients and families of those who lost their lives deserve transparency.”
Fungal spores are commonly found in soil, dust and damp environments but pose significant health risks for immunocompromised patients, such as those undergoing organ transplant procedures.
Construction could have stirred spores
The six infections, involving patients of a range of ages, followed another aspergillus case at RPA in May. Park said construction on RPA’s $940m redevelopment project was believed to have stirred up the mould spores.
The transplant unit is neighboured by the construction site. Over the seven years prior to 2023, RPA had recorded an average of just one aspergillus infection per year, according to staff correspondence in the published documents.
Chant said construction was a known risk factor in hospitals but air monitoring had not been routinely used, which she attributed to a gap in guidelines.
She said the department would issue new advice on managing rising cases of infections among transplant patients after an expert panel meeting next week.
Another transplant patient also died of a fungal infection but a doctor had judged their death was not related to the outbreak, Chant said.
“The difficulty is … finding the ones that were just unrelated to anything we could have controlled versus ones where we can actually take that action,” she said.
Hospital staff began investigating the links between the six cases on 10 December, then installed additional air filters, sent antifungal medication to patients and raised the alarm with management, documents show.
RPA closed its transplant unit on 2 January and moved its patients to another ward in December as the construction works paused. Air testing soon after found elevated aspergillus levels in the transplant ward compared to the rest of the hospital.
The unit reopened on 9 February after it was deep cleaned, its ceiling was resealed and its air filters were cleaned, with testing finding good air quality, the documents show.
However, a contractor’s review had also found visible mould across four hospital flours and aspergillus in a plant room on level four, which it warned could be a result of heavy rain and water damage.
The RPA cluster was included among a trove of documents revealing widespread mould concerns at NSW hospitals.
Park acknowledged mould would regularly arise across NSW Health buildings, adding that mould on hospital surfaces would not necessarily harm patients.
“When you have over 220 hospitals in New South Wales and you’ve had periods of heavy rain, like we’ve seen over the last few years, that is going to happen,” he said.
“What we try and do is get those mould rectified and removed as quickly as possible.”
