Victorian health officials refused to provide aged care workers PPE amid theft fears

Victorian aged care staff were refused safety equipment by senior health officials amid fears it was being stolen, months before a second coronavirus wave ravaged their sector and the state.

Senior health officials refused to provide safety equipment to aged-care facility staff because they believed it was being stolen, according to an email released by the hotel quarantine inquiry.

The email written by then Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr Annaliese van Diemen on the same day the hotel quarantine program was announced, was among thousands of pages made public by the inquiry over the weekend.

The documents also reveal it was more than two months after the hotel quarantine program started before DHHS authorised spending on infection control training for guards.

Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet Chris Eccles was set to front the inquiry on Monday. He is expected to be grilled over why the Victorian government rejected a federal government offer of ADF personnel and whose idea it was to use private guards rather than police.

Contemplating the problems of establishing infection control in aged-care facilities in March, Dr van Diemen noted the Commonwealth had said it would reimburse states for PPE provided to aged care in outbreaks, saying “we need a supply, here ready to go” but noting DHHS “cannot pre-position in facilities as people are stealing it”.

Victoria's former Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr Annaliese van Diemen wrote the email in question

She instead proposed a “needs assessment of what a facility should have to get them through first 24 hours of an outbreak” and “put(ting) in place a process for those who are managing outbreaks to also get PPE to facilities asap — should be done via the regular outbreak processes not in a separate manner”.

The documents also reveal in early June Dr van Diemen authorised $20,000 be spent on giving two hours’ training on infection control to the guards, many of whom did not speak English as a first language “and as we know adult learners in this type of occupational group learn best through practical demonstration,” a bureaucrat wrote.

Health Workers Union secretary Diana Asmar reacted angrily to the allegation in Dr van Diemen’s email. 

“In the six months that we’ve been dealing with this pandemic, I’m not aware of a single Victorian aged-care worker or HWU member facing a disciplinary meeting due to theft of PPE,” she said.

“To suggest aged care workers would steal PPE from their employer as a reason not to provide sufficient PPE is not only irrational and arrogant, it’s a kick in the guts to these frontline heroes.”

She said “given most Victorian COVID-19 outbreaks are consistently occurring in aged-care facilities, you have to ask the question: if only senior DHHS bureaucrats like Ms van Diemen had taken PPE seriously back in March, would Victoria now be in this mess?”

Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching also hit out at Dr van Diemen, saying Victoria’s health workers deserved “so much better than this”.

“Any health bureaucrat refusing to place personal protective equipment in aged care on spurious basis that workers might steal it is unfit to make decisions about anything,” Senator Kitching tweeted.

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