Federal government had no Covid-19 aged care plan, royal commission hears

A parliamentary inquiry was told last week that 97 Victorian aged care facilities had been affected in the second wave, with 657 residents and 594 staff infected with Covid-19. A further 25 home care services for the elderly were also affected. Seventeen recipients of these services were infected, as were 24 staff working in-home care. There had been 108 fatalities. The royal commission will later this week examine evidence of a “stand-off” between commonwealth and state health authorities over how to best handle an outbreak at Sydney’s Newmarch House, where the medical recommendation to send infected residents to hospital was discouraged out of an “intolerable” fear of setting a precedent. Health professionals on Monday gave evidence that attempts to replicate a “hospital in the home” were futile, due to issues including poor building airflow and staff undertrained in infection control. The commission heard that when outbreaks occurred, a facility’s workforce could be almost entirely replaced with surge staffing, who needed to be “oriented” to that particular aged care home.