Jul 27, 2020

Government fails to audit PPE before COVID crisis

The Government failed to audit nursing homes’ stock of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the weeks before fresh COVID outbreaks in Victoria despite more than 1,000 aged care providers requesting access to the national stockpile.

With reports of aged care providers in Victoria now facing shortages of PPE, this serious lapse in oversight is deeply concerning and evidence of the Government’s failure to adequately prepare Australia’s vulnerable nursing homes for COVID-19 outbreak.

In the critical weeks leading up to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Victorian nursing homes, why didn’t the Government and the aged care regulator do more to protect older Australians?

The announcement of a Victorian aged care response centre while welcome is sadly too late for some residents, staff and families already impacted.

Australia’s aged care system was broken before the COVID-19 pandemic and this is only putting extra stress on the system.

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  1. Makes you wonder if the government and others are wishing Aged Care and all it’s issues would just disappear hey? Biggest problem solved! But when it is all done and dusted and no more virus would any other future government really make a change in the sector. Nobody has really given a hard interview to the aged care minister. And he has not said anything substantial in any interview of late. The media needs to get Ken Wyatt out of his comfort zone and ask him why the hell Aged Care was allowed to get into the state it is. None of these waste of taxpayer’s money advocates have done a thing for Aged Care. They are just given the role of Aged Care Ministers/Aboriginal Minister to give us the impression someone is advocating for these people. Figureheads only! Everyone keeps saying in the media that Aged Care workers are some of the lowest paid in the workforce but hey? I haven’t heard one advocate discuss wage rises or staff ratios let alone transparency with all these For Profit Aged Care facilities and where the devil the taxpayer’s money is being spent. It certainly isn’t with aged care staff! Everybody talks the talk but absolutely nothing changes for the better. Bloody sick of it.

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