Federal Government delivers just 22,600 COVID-19 shots to Qld aged care
The Federal Government is under fire over its COVID-19 vaccine rollout to Queensland aged care residents and nursing home staff.
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The Federal Government has administered COVID-19 vaccines to just a quarter of Queensland’s aged care residents and nursing home staff, despite them being included in the nation’s highest priority group for the shots.
Figures supplied by the Federal Health Department reveal the Morrison Government has delivered just 22,600 vaccine doses to people living and working in the aged care and disability accommodation sector in Queensland since the COVID-19 vaccine rollout began in late February.
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The focus has primarily been on nursing home residents raising concerns among health unions about the risks to aged care workers.
Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union secretary Beth Mohle said vaccinating both residents and staff on the same day would provide greater protection.
“The current community spread of COVID-19 in Queensland only emphasises how easily COVID-19 can escape surveillance and containment efforts and it is concerning that the Commonwealth would not be doing all that it can to protect vulnerable groups such as older Australians in institutional settings,” Ms Mohle wrote in a letter to Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly.
She told The Courier-Mail the low numbers of aged care workers vaccinated was a “critical system vulnerability that must be fixed”.
About 37,100 nursing home residents and 48,100 aged care workers in Queensland are eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccinations under the high priority Phase 1A rollout.
To be fully vaccinated, they each require two doses of vaccine, equating to more than 170,000 shots.
“More than 105,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in over 940 aged care residential and disability accommodation facilities across Australia,” the Federal Health Department said in a statement.
“This includes more than 22,600 COVID-19 vaccine doses in 199 Queensland residential aged care and disability accommodation facilities.
“Over 150 residential aged care facilities are scheduled for COVID-19 vaccination clinics in Queensland next week to deliver approximately 10,500 vaccine doses.
“All Commonwealth funded residential aged care facilities across Australia have … scheduled COVID-19 vaccination clinics as part of the national rollout. This includes over 2500 residential aged care facilities nationally, and over 500 in Queensland.”
Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles said the State Government was “genuinely concerned” about why the Federal Government did not include aged care facility workers at the same time they were vaccinating the residents at individual nursing homes.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Mr Miles said. “If there’s going to be an outbreak in an aged care facility, it’s most likely going to be via a staff member. Doing the staff is really important too.”
The Federal Health Department defended its rollout saying priority was given to aged care residents “as they are the most vulnerable”.
“The medical advice is to not vaccinate residents and large numbers of staff in aged care at the same time. This is because facilities could be placed at risk of staffing shortfalls due to the possibility of mild side effects post-vaccination,” the department said.
Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said she had been advised the 41,000 frontline health workers and hotel quarantine staff included in Queensland Health’s Phase 1A high priority rollout had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
With more international arrivals into Queensland testing positive to highly infectious COVID-19 variants, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk suggested that until the Federal Government vaccination program was ramped up, the number of returned travellers allowed into Australia should be cut.
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