The Federal Government is taking action after Australia’s aged care homes recorded more deaths of aged care residents with COVID-19 in January than the country did in the whole of 2021.
Federal Chief Medical Officer Dr Paul Kelly (pictured above) announced yesterday that the Government would launch an investigation into the COVID-19 deaths of residents in aged care homes after he revealed 84 per cent of the 1,103 COVID-19 deaths in Australia from 15 December to the end of January had been people aged over 70, with a significant number of those in aged care.
“We will be setting up a specific task force in the Department [of Health]to look at [aged care deaths]and do everything we can to get more detail about the issues that – particularly in aged care but more broadly in the community – related to those people who have passed away,” he said.
Federal Government data, published last Friday, shows that 389 aged care residents had died with COVID-19 up to 27 January, compared to a total of 282 deaths in the whole of 2021.
Minister for Senior Australians, Aged Care Services and Sport, Senator Richard Colbeck told the Senate Select Committee into the Government’s COVID-19 response on Wednesday that 471 aged care residents had died in January.
Never seen anything like it
Mark Sewell, CEO of aged care and retirement village provider Warrigal, told the ABC he has never witnessed such scenes in his entire career.
“I’ve never in those 35 years seen this kind of crisis level of exhaustion and work from frontline care staff in a human service,” he said.
Before Christmas last year, none of Mark’s 11 aged care homes in the NSW and ACT had experienced a COVID-19 outbreak since the pandemic began.
“On the 29th of December, we had our first case and then it went berserk,” he said.
“We had staff working overtime, every day. And we had some staff who did 10, 12, 15 days in a row.”
Governments need to help providers better prepare in future
Leading Age Services Australia CEO Sean Rooney said the aged care sector providers and workers were overwhelmed and urged the Federal Government to ensure this situation never happens again.
“There will be more waves of COVID-19 variants and next time Federal and State Governments should be prepared for it. The frontline, the workers, in aged care cannot keep having to face this pressure. We need large stockpiles of everything,” he said.
Professor Kelly also warned of a future Omicron wave in winter as temperatures drop.
“There will be more deaths, more elderly people will die,” he said.
“Despite our best efforts, despite all the infection control, there is a risk of that happening.
“The balance between deaths and increased aged care restrictions is difficult, and these are ethical and philosophical questions. They’re hard decisions.”
ADF support on the cards
Defence Minister Peter Dutton told Nine this morning Federal Government is prepared to bring in the defence force to help with the aged care crisis.
“If that is what is required to fix this problem and to provide dignity to these people, that is what we will do,” he said.
Bringing in the Defence Force to help the embattled providers and workers was part of a request for help from the Australian Aged Care Collaboration (AACC), the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation, Health Services Union, United Workers Union and Australian Workers Union.
Prime Morrison Scott Morrison at the time ridiculed the idea, arguing that defence personnel are “not a surrogate aged care workforce”.
“They can’t just make those problems go away. They will continue to be challenges in aged care. That is a problem of the virus. And it’s a problem that has been seen in many jurisdictions,” said the Prime Minister.
Managing this latest COVID-19 wave has certainly challenged Australia’s aged care sector like never before.
We hope that this investigation provides valuable learnings for both Government and providers – and ensures that we can better protect our Mums and Dads while enabling them to live their lives.
