Coronavirus Victoria: Letter exposes outbreak bungle at St Basil’s in Melbourne

A letter has exposed the fact that officials knew about a coronavirus outbreak at St Basil’s home but didn’t alert the health department.

New evidence has found the federal aged care watchdog was aware of an outbreak of COVID-19 at a Melbourne nursing home but didn’t alert the Department of Health for four days.

The bungle meant nobody from the federal government was able to respond to the devastating coronavirus outbreak at St Basil’s Home For The Aged in Fawkner. The outbreak at St Basil’s has been linked to 169 cases of COVID-19 and at least 20 deaths.

The aged care facility, which is run and managed by the Greek Orthodox Church, was evacuated last week, with residents moved into hospitals. There are now plans underway to repatriate the residents back to the facility.

Janet Anderson, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner told a Senate inquiry last week she’d not been aware of any cases of coronavirus at St Basil’s until July 14.

Aged care Minister Richard Colbeck and Health Department Secretary Professor Brendan Murphy also said they were unaware there’d been any cases at the facility until that date.

But a letter sent to the Senate Select Committee revealed that in a phone call made to St Basil’s on July 10, a representative confirmed that a staff member had tested positive for COVID-19 on July 8, six days earlier.

The representative also said the Public Health Unit had already been advised of the positive case inside the facility.

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What a catastrophic failure.

The Morrison Government’s aged care regulator knew about an outbreak of COVID-19 at St Basil’s for four days and failed to inform the Department of Health. pic.twitter.com/rAG5dSZK5n

— Julie Collins (@JulieCollinsMP) August 10, 2020

The federal aged care regulator knew about an outbreak at St Basil’s but failed to tell the Department of Health for at least four days. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

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The case was discovered during a routine phone survey made to every Victorian facility, to see if they’d read COVID-19 response document.

“The regulatory official from the commission who made the assessment contact referred the service’s responses to the commission’s COVID-19 response team and this information was escalated internally and recorded in the commission’s daily COVID-19 confirmed case tracker,” the letter said.

“The commission did not escalate the matter externally at the time because the St Basil’s representative had confirmed in the interview that they had advised the (Victorian public health unit) of the outbreak.”

The Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was “concerned” about the communication breakdowns and the government would be conducting inquiries into what went wrong.

“My understanding is that the survey had been conducted and those conducting the survey had the view that the facility was aware of the processes required to advise the Public Health Unit in Victoria that they had indeed done that,” Mr Morrison said.

“It turns out that had not been done, and so there had been a breakdown in that communication, and that’s not good, I understand the processes that lead to that have been changed.”