New data has revealed the Morrison Government’s aged care regulator did not sanction one Victorian home at the height of the state’s COVID-19 second wave.
The data on the performance of the Morrison Government’s regulator between July and September also reveals just 18 homes in Victoria were given notices to agree despite hundreds of outbreaks in aged care.
It beggars belief that despite more than 600 deaths not one aged care home in Victoria was sanctioned by the Morrison Government’s regulator.
How did the Morrison Government and the failed Minister for Aged Care think this was acceptable?
The Morrison Government’s regulator is a toothless tiger and clearly doesn’t have the powers and resources it needs to keep older Australians safe.
There has been one shocking revelation after another.
The Minister for Aged Care has previously confirmed the regulator ceased unannounced visits to aged care homes at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The regulator also had to admit it knew about the deadly outbreak of COVID-19 at St Basil’s for four days and failed to inform the Department of Health.
The Morrison Government’s inaction to fix the regulator is just more evidence of its aged care failure.
Day after day the evidence mounts of serious neglect in aged care and every day all we see from the Morrison Government is running away, passing the buck and not accepting responsibility for its own failures.
Neglect. That’s the legacy of this Government when it comes to aged care.
Australians deserve better.
Notifications
Why in Gods name would these facilities be sanctioned?
Nursing homes were never designed to be hospitals, they did their very best but Covid got into their building. If someone is to be sanctioned it should be the state governments that borbade residents suffering from Covid entry to hospital. Designated, equipped and staffed wards sat empty and still the government insisted that elderly vulnerable residents stay and infect each other. It’s impossible to isolate or social distance for residents living with dementia in a nursing home and if anyone let down residents then put blame where it belongs.
The nursing homes could have at least separated infectious patients from non-infectious patients. They could have also had a better plan and communicated better with anxious family members. The fact is that the Aged Care system has been run into the ground by successive governments. Moving patients into the public hospital system could have overwhelmed capacity. Some public hospitals also weren’t properly set up for COVID patients and this resulted in large numbers of health care workers being exposed to or getting COVID. In retrospect the state government could have done things differently but I would pin the blame for quarantine stuff ups on the people that organised staffing not the state government. My thoughts are with the families who lost loved ones and who will not be able to talk to them at Christmas or share a meal.