Top bureaucrat ‘concerned’ if workers had time to read Covid outbreak report.

A top bureaucrat says he isn’t concerned that St Basil’s workers didn’t read an important 10-page report on Covid outbreaks in aged care.

Australia’s top aged care bureaucrat told an inquest into the deaths of 50 St Basil’s residents that he’d be “concerned” if workers had time to read a 10-page Covid outbreak report.

Counsel assisting the coronial inquest quizzed Michael Lye, Deputy Secretary for Ageing and Aged Care, in a bizarre back and forth over the “learnings” from NSW outbreaks in the months before the nation’s deadliest aged care cluster.

Peter Rozen QC asked Mr Lye why an important report into the Dorothy Henderson Lodge outbreak, where six residents died, wasn’t made public when it was completed in April - three months before the St Basil’s cluster.

The report stated it was essential for aged care homes to respond promptly to a Covid outbreak, to have access to specialist infection prevention advice and bring on more than the usual amount of staff — none of which happened at St Basil’s.

Mr Lye responded that there was “varying sophistication” among aged care workers and the Health Department preferred to convert documents into “short checklists” for the industry.

He said he was “very interested” in aged care workers adjusting their behaviour from the outbreak “learnings” and denied there was a “deliberate decision not to publish”.

Fifty residents died at St Basil’s during the Covid outbreak. Picture: Jason Edwards

“In a funny way I’d be more concerned if they had time to read through a full report than to digest the learnings” from other “action focused communications,” he said.

Mr Rozen questioned whether Mr Lye was suggesting that the 10-page,”very easy to read”, report was “too difficult for some of the less sophisticated facility managers to understand”.

Mr Lye refuted that proposition, instead saying that the aged care sector was asking for “practical advice”.

The court heard that a more extensive Federal report — the Independent Review into Covid-19 Outbreaks in Residential Aged Care — was later released on Melbourne Cup Day.

Mr Rozen told Mr Lye that counsel assisting would submit to His Honour Judge John Cain there were “gaps in preparation” by the Federal Department of Health before the St Basil’s outbreak, where 45 residents died of Covid-19 and five people of neglect in July and August 2020.

Mr Lye’s evidence continues in the Coroner’s Court on Thursday.