‘Should not have happened’: Inside St Basil’s families’ despair after outbreak
All Ivan Rukavina wanted was answers on where his mother was, but day after day his calls to St Basil’s aged care home went unanswered. Then just days after finally learning his mother was in hospital, she passed away — robbed of spending her precious last days with family.
HS Coronavirus News
Don't miss out on the headlines from HS Coronavirus News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Ivan Rukavina stood outside St Basil’s nursing home in Fawkner, asking questions that no one seemed able to answer.
He was one of many.
His mother Marija tested positive to COVID-19 three days before her family found out. Then, no one would answer the phone at the aged care facility. Day after day after day.
Mr Rukavina couldn’t find his 86-year-old Mum. He didn’t know how she was or where she was.
“It could have been handled s---loads better,” he said. “It should not have happened.”
Tales of Mr Rukavina’s kind of woe could multiply in coming days. In Victoria yesterday, 683 cases had been linked to aged care, including workers and contacts as well as residents. Swelling aged care clusters accounted for five of the six deaths overnight.
Mr Rukavina voiced a growing chorus of despair and anger about the perceived inadequacy of the emergency response in Melbourne.
Relatives of aged care residents argue that authorities had months to prepare for the potential crisis. They feel like their loved ones have been failed.
Elderly people, after all, were always the most susceptible to COVID-19. Aged care was the section of society that demanded greater protections than any other.
Clusters erupted in Sydney, where one mourning daughter said it “spread like the plague”, at the pandemic’s beginning. Mortality rates for such residents, nationally, have been put at more than four in 10, and the Victorian projections are set to dwarf the number of previous cases.
Mr Rukavina had been among dozens of Victorian families in a holding pattern. He discovered his mother had been transferred to the Epworth Hospital.
Then, last night, he received the worst of news. His mother had died.
His despair over recent days had been shared by Peter Papamatheou, who finally got to speak to his mum, Athina, yesterday morning.
Athina tested positive on Friday, and was transferred to Knox Private Hospital. Her son, after days of anguish, felt relieved to finally hear that “she was alive”.
“I don’t know if they knew what was going on or who was who …” he says. “All communication was lost … for three days I had not heard a thing.”
Another concerned son, John Karahalios, compared the cluster at St Basil’s – at 87 cases – to an outbreak at Anglicare Newmarch House in Sydney’s west.
At Newmarch, relatives complained of not being informed of their loved one’s condition, and of having no say in their care. They heard stories about deplorable conditions, such as pieces of bread for lunch and showers weeks apart. Some lessons have been learned. Residents have been removed from some Melbourne homes, including St Basil’s, unlike the Newmarch response in which treatment options pursued within aged-care facilities were later acknowledged as a mistake.
Yet some errors are being repeated. Mr Karahalios’ mother, Margarita, tested negative to COVID-19 but was hospitalised last Thursday after a fall. She was released back to St Basil’s, where her worried son could not contact her or the staff, before being transferred to a Frankston hospital.
“The whole thing from beginning to end is a shemozzle, he said. “Their job is to make sure that if a pandemic is coming that they follow protocols and protect the old and vulnerable.”
On the other side of Melbourne, in Bayswater, Carolyn Smith speaks of her fears after not being able to see her mother, Joan, for months. On the phone, Joan cried from her room at Clarendon Grange, which has not reported a positive case.
‘It makes me angry,” Ms Smith said of the escalating crisis.
“I feel like we had time and an opportunity and there were certain things we could have put in place to lessen the risk. To be one of those people saying goodbye to their mum or dad over the phone – it terrifies me.”
Back at St Basil’s, Spiros Dimitriou said the last week had been an “ordeal.”
The family readied for the worst news after father John, who has dementia, tested positive more than a week ago.
A day later, they were told he was doing fine.
Mr Dimitriou, who got to see his father for the first time yesterday, felt exhausted.
“We’ve been up late at night and trying to sleep and you can’t,” he said.
“We wake up and wonder what today is going to bring.
“A lot of the frustration stems from the lack of communication.”
MORE NEWS
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT AGED CARE CORONAVIRUS CHAOS