Aged care chaos on Victoria’s deadliest day
Concerned loved ones have gathered outside a virus-plagued Fawkner aged care home as confusion reigns over the condition of residents. It comes as Victoria records 459 new cases and ten deaths.
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Victoria has recorded 459 new cases of coronavirus today, and 10 deaths.
The new deaths include one man in his 40s.
Premier Daniel Andrews slammed Victorians who refused to wear face coverings or abide by the stay at home directives, urging them to think of the ten families who lost loved ones in the past 24 hours.
“If you’re just making a selfish choice about your alleged personal liberty, quoting something you’ve read on some website - this is not about human rights,” he said.
“There are 10 families that are going to be burying someone in the next few days.
“Wear a mask. It’s not too much to ask.”
FAMILIES’ DISTRESS AMID AGED CARE CONFUSION
Distressed family members of St Basil’s residents have gathered outside the entrance of the troubled aged care facility in concern for the wellbeing of their loved ones.
Spiros Dimitriou’s father John tested positive for COVID-19 a week ago and remains in the Fawkner nursing home, where he is on a ventilator.
Mr Dimitriou said that he and his family have been constantly trying to contact the Fawkner facility to find out the 75-year-old’s condition, but has been given mixed messages from staff members.
“I got a phone call on Friday saying that Dad’s going to pass away, that he wasn’t going to make it. He’s still in there,” he said.
“It sounded like he was on his deathbed. I called yesterday and ‘we’ll get back to you’ was the answer I got. They didn’t get back to me.
“My sister rang another number and spoke to someone in my dad’s area who said he had been fed, his oxygen levels were [doing better] and he’d been taking his tablets.
“How could you tell me on Friday that he was on his deathbed and then the next day staff say he’s going good?”
Mr Dimitriou added:“The secretivity (sic), I don’t understand it. Why aren’t they communicating?”
Mr Dimitriou said that both management at the Fawkner facility and the government need to take accountability for the failure to keep aged care residents safe.
“I think there are two parties to blame. St Basil’s management, who have failed in their duty or care, and secondly the government,” he said.
“We just want communication - no one is communicating. You’re dealing with human lives, these people aren’t animals.”
“It’s frustrating and disappointing.”
Ivan Rukavina, whose mother Marija tested positive for COVID-19 over a week ago, told of how he still hadn’t been contacted by St Basil’s about his 86-year-old mother.
Mr Rukavina said that “all authorities are to blame” for not standing behind residents in aged care facilities.
“All authorities are to blame… you’ve got Aged Care Victoria, the federal and state governments and the whole medical industry,” he said.
“We’ve been let down. It’s as simple as that.
“Does Australia want to be known as the country that can’t get anything right? That’s what I’m saying.
“There’s no point having Premiers making daily announcements and counting numbers - they could have done that in primary school. They need to be down here.”
Family members have been told by staff at St Basil’s that a further 20 residents will be moved from the facility to hospital today, but it is unclear which patients are being transferred.
Twelve ambulances are parked in the car park of the nursing home while the families of residents wait for news.
Helen Karikas revealed how she walked to the window of her mother Vicky’s room in St Basil’s so she could see her.
Ms Karikas said that her family are awaiting the results of the 85-year-old’s latest COVID-19 test.
While they don’t know whether she has the virus, Ms Karikas said she believes her mother’s health in deteriorating.
“I decided to walk around because I know where my mum’s room is. The blinds were open and I could see inside,” she said.
“She just looks lifeless. Skinny, she’s all withdrawn, I don’t know if she even knew who we were.”
Her husband, Jack Karikas, said he tried to report St Basil’s treatment of his mother in law to Victoria Police.
“I’ve just been on the phone to the police so I can press charges of neglect. They told me they have no authority because it’s being handled by DHHS,” he said.
“There are people dying in there. It’s not even a COVID issue - it’s a care issue, it’s a neglect issue.”
John Karahalios’s mother Margarita has only been a resident for the last St Basil’s five weeks ago.
While Ms Karahalio has tested negative for the virus, her son said that the family are concerned for her wellbeing as she needs 24 hour care.
The last communication the Karahalios family had with their 85-year-old mum was when she was taken to the Northern Hospital on Thursday after she suffered a fall.
She was taken back to St Basil’s the following day.
“I’ve had some communication with a social worker but she can’t give us any answers,” he said.
“We want to speak to mum. We need to see her and speak to her and they won’t allow that.
“Let us just lay eyes on our loved ones so we know they’re ok.”
Peter Papamatheou was told on Friday that his mother Athina, who is a resident in St Basil’s, had tested positive for COVID-19.
Since then, he has received no word on his mother’s condition and claimed that communication has been worse since commonwealth staff took over the aged care facility.
“My daughter and I called 27 times yesterday and the phone just rang out,” he said.
“We don’t know if mum has died, gone to the hospital - it’s an absolute shambles.
“There’s no blame. It’s happened, I get it.
“I had a caseworker ring me yesterday and they asked me how my mum was. I said to them ‘Isn’t that for you to find out?’
“What’s going on? Since the government has taken over, it’s been worse.”
Mr Papamatheou told of how his 86-year-old mum is the all he has left after his father passed away last month.
“I’m an only child and I buried my father four weeks ago,” he said
“Mum is the only one I have left. I just want to know how she is.
“I was going to ring the police today because I just don’t know what to do. I’m lost.
- Sharon McGowan
ST BASIL’S FAMILY LEFT IN DARK OVER DEATH CAUSE
The family of a beloved father, a resident of the nursing home at the center of Victoria’s aged care crisis, has been left in the dark over whether he has died from COVID-19.
Theodoros Makridis, 92, passed away on Saturday at the St Basil’s Aged Care Home in Fawkner and family members have said there has been little communication about the cause of his death.
Mr Makridis’s daughter, Rita Makridis, said since her father entered the aged care facility on July 2, the following weeks have been “absolutely horrific”.
“When we dropped him off at St Basil’s we couldn’t even go in, say goodbye or explain what was going on properly,” Ms Makridis said.
“They just put him in a wheelchair and wheeled him away from us.”
Ms Makridis said since being granted one 30-minute meeting behind a glass wall with her father before the second lockdown, there has been minimal communication from the aged-care facility.
“No one has been answering the phones,” Ms Makridis said.
“They’ve set up a call centre that they communicate information to in Adelaide, and this call centre let us know some of what was happening.”
“We have been waiting for test results about whether he had COVID-19 at the time of his death, but we’ve still received nothing.”
The 92-year-old, who lived in Moonee Ponds prior to entering St Basils, was a neighbour of former Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Ms Makridis said she got in contact with Mr Shorten after weeks of trying to gain more information from St Basils about her father.
“When I rang Bill he rang me back in half an hour and immediately recognised my dad,” Ms Makridis said.
“He rang the minister for health and tried his best not to let this go.
“Unfortunately it was too late, and we received contact from St Basils yesterday saying our father had passed away.”
- Alexandra Gauci
VICTORIA’S DEADLIEST DAY
Six of the deaths are linked to aged care facilities.
Three women, two aged in their 80s and one in her 70s, are among the deaths, as are seven men, including three in their 70s, two in their 80s, one in his 60s and one in his 40s.
It is not yet clear if the man in his 40s who died overnight had any underlying conditions but it is understood he was not linked to any known outbreaks.
Mr Andrews said the “wildly infectious virus” did not discriminate against age or gender.
“There is no reason for people to think because they’re otherwise fit or not in their 80s, they somehow have vaccine for this - they don’t,” he said.
The Victorian death toll now stands at 71.
There are currently 4233 active coronavirus cases across the state, with 560 linked to aged care facilities.
There are 228 Victorians in hospital, 42 of which are in intensive care.
Mr Andrews said the 381 coronavirus cases among healthcare workers pose a challenge to Victoria’s healthcare system.
“That is a significant challenge, given, whilst we have overall capacity and we’ve worked very hard all throughout the year to grow the number of people that can be available for our fight against this virus in a clinical sense, whenever we have clinical staff and other critical health workers away, furloughed because they are a close contact or in fact as an active case, that does put some additional pressure on our system,” Mr Andrews said.
Between 30 and 40 per cent of cases spread through community transmission are aged between 20-29 years old, the Premier said.
303 cases are currently linked to public housing towers in Nroth Melbourne and Flemington, while 66 cases are linked to public housing towers in Carlton.
Existing outbreaks have a total of:
- 90 cases at Somerville Retail Services in Tottenham;
- 82 cases at Estia Health in Ardeer;
- 78 cases at St Basil’s Homes for the Aged in Fawkner;
- 69 cases at JBS in Brooklyn;
- 60 cases at Bertocchi Smallgoods in Thomastown;
- 53 cases at Glendale Aged care facility in Werribee;
- 48 cases at Estia Health in Heidelberg;
- 47 cases at Australian Lamb Company in Colac;
- 39 cases at Arcare Aged Care in Craigieburn;
- 27 cases at Aurrum Aged Care in Plenty;
- 25 cases at Regis Aged Care in Brighton;
- 24 cases at Epping Gardens Aged Care;
- 19 cases at Kirkbrae Presbyterian Homes in Kilsyth;
- 11 cases at Outlook Gardens Aged Care in Dandenong North;
- 12 cases at Linfox Warehouse in Truganina;
- Nine cases at CraigCare Aged Care Facility in Pascoe Vale;
- Seven cases at Fresh Plus in Craigieburn;
- Six cases at Diamond Valley Pork in Laverton North;
- Five cases at Don KR Castlemaine;
- Three cases at Base Backpackers in St Kilda;
- Three cases cases at Impact English College in Melbourne.
ADF AND PARAMEDICS JOIN FORCES
The Premier announced Australian Defence Force personnel will from tomorrow begin training with Ambulance Victoria ahead of an on-road partnership to support paramedics.
“We have some 200 off-roster paramedics and third-year students helping us with contact tracing, their skills in dealing with dynamic circumstances means they are perfectly suited to that,” he said.
“That number may in fact grow over time.
“20 ADF personnel who tomorrow will work alongside Ambulance Victoria paramedics in joint crews.
“That will scale up over the next eight to 10 days to around 150 ADF staff, so essentially freeing 150 Ambulance Victoria paramedics to do other tasks, and also, I suppose, getting ahead of any potential furloughing or any potential quarantine that has to happen because of any positive cases across our Ambulance Victoria workforce.”
CEO of Ambulance Victoria Tony Walker said plans for the SES, ADF and paramedics to work together had been in the works since January.
ADF responders will begin training to work alongside other emergency services tomorrow, he said.
WHAT’S DRIVING THE SECOND WAVE?
Workplaces are driving most cases during the second wave of the virus, the Premier said.
“Aged care, health care, big distribution centres, meatworks, cool stores, big warehouses, these workplaces are driving most of this second wave and therefore what that tells you is that some people, for whatever reason – not a matter of judgement, just a fact – some people are feeling sick, they have symptoms and they are still going to work,” he said.
“If that continues, then we will just continue to see more and more cases.”
People who head to work with virus warning signs pose an unacceptably high risk to co-workers, Mr Andrews said.
“These big, often very large employers who are well and truly in the centre of the outbreaks we’ve seen as part of the second wave, I think they know and understand they’ve got to be taking steps,” he said.
“I think many, many of them are, it’s always about double-checking, triple-checking, making sure they have all the right processes in place.”
Nearly 43,000 people were tested yesterday, an increase of almost 5000 on the daily testing record.
Mr Andrews said he had no advice to extend the lockdown to regional Victoria after a lamb facility in Colac recorded a large outbreak in workers.
“(Colac) is a workplace based outbreak,
“It’s a very significant challenge, but one I think we’re equal to,”
Mr Andrews said increased testing was being conducted in the area but community transmission remained low in regional Victoria.
“It’s not like there are no rules in regional Victoria, they’re just different to those in Melbourne,” Mr Andrews said.
“If everybody follows the rules, whether you’re in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, a big regional town or the smallest country town, that’s how we’ll get to the other side of this.”
WILL STAGE THREE RESTRICTIONS BE EXTENDED?
The Premier wouldn’t rule out an extension of current restrictions.
“These things change rapidly, but we have to say these numbers are far too high,” he said.
“Whilst there is some relative, and I stress the term “relative” stability, and I mean we are not
seeing the doubles and doubling again which is what the modelling told us we would have be dealing with, we’ve got to drive these numbers down.
“We are approaching the halfway mark. We’ve been clear that it would get worse before it got
better, but stability had to be achieved before we would start to see numbers fall.”
“THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN”: PREMIER PROMISES MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT
The pandemic has highlighted the need to strengthen Victoria’s mental health system beyond an additional $80 million in funding, Mr Andrews said.
“The system is broken. The system is not working,” he said.
“The system is not really a system. It’s a series of services and they don’t connect as well as they should.”
“At last count, we were up to about $80 million in additional funding. It could be more than that.
“If we have to do more, we will.
“We know that this is very challenging for every single Victorian. That challenge will, I suppose, present differently.
“We know that this is not easy. That’s why we have to get it over and done it as quickly as we can.”
126 FINES DISHED OUT IN PAST 24-HOURS
Police has slapped Victorians flouting coronavirus lockdown rules with 126 fines, including a South Melbourne man stopped at a Wyndham checkpoint trying to drive to Torquay for a surf.
Twenty people were fined in the past 24 hours for failing to wear a mask while out of home.
It included a couple, who were caught on Saturday with two children “in the vicinity” of the 1000 steps just after 2pm.
The 47-year-old man and 51-year-old woman, both from Ferntree Gully, were asked why they were not wearing face coverings but refused to give police their details.
They were both arrested and will be fined $200.
Victoria Police spokeswoman Anita Brens said this sort of behaviour was “unacceptable and unnecessary”.
“Whilst police will use discretion in the first seven days since the CHO direction was issued, we will not hesitate to issue fines to people who are obviously and blatantly showing a disregard for community safety by failing to wear a mask,” she said.
- Monique Hore
AGED CARE’S COVID CRISIS
Individual providers for aged care facilities need to take responsibility for their part in the coronavirus death toll, Mr Andrews said.
It comes as coronavirus cases at Victorian aged-care homes have rocketed to more than 500 as health authorities race against time to stop rising deaths and hospital admissions among vulnerable residents.
St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner evacuated at least 20 residents on Saturday after the cluster, Victoria’s largest at an aged-care home, swelled to 74 cases.
The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal there were significant delays in the outbreak response at St Basil’s, with management choosing not to move staff out and bring new staff in immediately after positive results were discovered.
It is understood the federal government intervened on Wednesday by sending nursing graduates to the site.
This was then boosted on Thursday by 12 registered nurses supplied by the state government.
Family members have also complained about poor communication from management and a lack of information about their loved ones. The 74 cases connected to the home include staff and residents.
SCROLL DOWN TO THE COMMENTS TO LEAVE A TRIBUTE FOR A LOVED ONE LOST TO CORONAVIRUS.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt on Saturday announced the establishment of the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre — which will be in operation from Monday — in a bid to control the spiralling situation across 38 sites.
The task force will include members of the Australian Defence Force, state and federal governments, emergency management teams and medical personnel and help with prevention, outbreak management and control.
“This is to ensure rapid response where these cases are occurring,” Mr Hunt said.
A total of 260 aged-care residents from 23 facilities, and 265 staff across 45 homes, were yesterday confirmed as having the virus.
Cases also grew at Estia Aged Care in Ardeer and Menarock Life Aged Care in Essendon, which now have 71 and 60 cases respectively.
Victoria recorded 357 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, with five more lives lost.
Those deaths included a woman in her 90s, a man and woman in their 80s, a woman in her 70s and a woman in her 60s, bringing the state’s total death toll to 61.
An ADF member helping with testing efforts was diagnosed positive. ADF personnel are attending homes of those who have tested positive but who do not answer their phone or co-operate with public health officials.
Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton said the current daily figures would result in up to 40 people admitted to hospital every day.
The Herald Sunrevealed on Saturday hospitals were bracing for a potential doubling in the number of patients.
Prof Sutton said: “At some point we will see a stabilisation in the active number of cases in Victoria. The number of those hospitalised will continue to increase for a few weeks yet.”
SCHOOLS, CHILDCARES WANT MORE HELP
Principals and childcare centre operators are ramping up pressure on the state government over safety concerns, contact tracing bungles and a lack of support.
Dozens of families from one southwestern childcare centre were not told they were close contacts of an infected user of the centre for nine days, one staff member has revealed.
“This meant they were not isolating when they should have been because they didn’t know and in the end we had to tell them ourselves,” the senior staffer said.
Australian Childcare Alliance president Paul Mondo, confirmed hundreds of close contacts of infected childcare families continued to mix in the community because of departmental delays.
The news comes as 118 early childhood services and 41 schools are closed to due coronavirus cases or government restrictions.
In other disclosures, principal Paul Clohesy from Trinity College in Colac said his staff had to contact nearly 70 school families themselves.
He said “overwhelmed” DHHS staff did not get in touch for nearly three days with those identified as close contacts of an infected student and then asked the school to send out their letters.
Jeremy Stowe-Linder, principal of Bialik College in Hawthorn East, said DHHS staff were “well-meaning but unable to assist, which makes it much harder for us”.
His staff could not get through to DHHS on the phone when they were dealing with a suspected case on campus. Despite remote learning, the school still has 400 people on site. “We would like to be more supported to follow the government agenda,” he said.
Opposition education spokeswoman Cindy McLeish said the government should provide a dedicated COVID-19 hotline “to provide resources … during their time of need”.
Education Minister James Merlino said the “settings and arrangements” were based on the advice of the Chief Health Officer.
– Susie O’Brien
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