As it happened Victoria COVID updates: Four Melbourne aged care homes in lockdown as state records 11 local cases; exposure site list grows

Hi, Mat Dunckley here, I’m digital editor at The Age. I’ve been looking after the blog for the last few hours and it’s time now to close it off.

It’s been an extremely busy day so here’s a run through some of the significant events:

• The government announced there were five new cases of locally-transmitted coronavirus in the morning but at the lunchtime media conference added a further six cases that were confirmed after the Sunday night cut off;
• Of particular concern were cases in aged care facility patients and staff. At the Arcare Maidstone centre the government said that two staff members and one patient have tested positive. All other staff and residents have tested negative. One of the staff who has tested positive also worked at the BlueCross Western Gardens centre in Sunshine. The Royal Freemasons facility in Footscray returned to normal operations after a 24-hour lockdown. The Royal Freemasons facility - Coppin Centre on Punt Road - is still locked down while a staff test result is processed;
• There was much debate about whether aged care workers could still work in more than one facility after issues in last year’s lockdown. We reported this morning that the federal government last year eased rules that had restricted workers to one facility. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt defended the move saying it aligned with health advice and a need to provide flexibility in the system; and
• There were also issues in the education system. Willmott Park Primary and Mount Ridley College, both state schools in Craigieburn in Melbourne’s north, have been closed as has Craigieburn tutoring school Edu-Kingdom College, which was listed as a tier 1 exposure site after a positive case visited the venue. Mercy College in Coburg and Viewbank Preschool and Fairy Hills Kindergarten in Ivanhoe have also been closed.

We will be back tomorrow with live coverage, free for all readers.

Stay safe out there.

You might have seen reports elsewhere today that prisoners were confined to their cells after a staff member at the Metropolitan Remand Centre in Ravenhall, in Melbourne’s outer-western suburbs, had visited a tier 1 COVID-19 exposure site.

It turns out, it was actually a tier 2 site and the staff member did not visit at the time specified by the Department of Health. Inmates were confined to their cells on Monday while that was sorted out but have since been released.

The staff member is being tested and will not return to work until returning a negative result.

Visits to all Victorian prisons were suspended last Tuesday as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak that has forced the state into lockdown.

More than 20 inmates have tested positive throughout the pandemic, but there has been no prisoner-to-prisoner transmission of coronavirus.

People entering the prison system are subjected to 14 days of quarantine, in what human rights lawyers have said was akin to solitary confinement.

Thousands of inmates have been granted “emergency management days” which will see their sentences reduced.

Eligible prisoners will have their prison terms commuted by one day for every day of significant restrictions they faced.

Barbara Hansen’s parents, Florence and Graham, are both residents at Arcare Maidstone aged care home, where two staff members and a resident have tested positive for coronavirus.

Ms Hansen told The Age they first were alerted to the outbreak by a call from the centre at 10.30pm on Saturday night.

Florence and Graham Hansen, are both residents at Arcare Maidstone.

“It was 10.30pm at night and they rang and told me and ... it was like sort of fear where you go ‘oh no’. It’s not the call that you wanted at all. And I’m sure they were just as devastated to be calling us,” she said.

Her parents have been at the facility for three years.

“It’s a really well-run facility, obviously this is not quite what we wanted to hear,” she said. “I’ve spoken to Dad and they seem to be in good spirits so we just have to take each day as it comes and put faith and trust in the facility.”

While last year’s lockdown was a challenge, she said her parents coped well and staff at Arcare Maidstone had gone out of their way to make sure they could Zoom and Facetime to keep in regular contact with them.

“This time around it feels different but I don’t know if it’s because of the virus, it’s all sort of happening really quickly,” she said.

“I think it’s just the speed, it’s happening a lot quicker, it feels that way.”

Her parents had received a dose of the Pfizer prior to the lockdown and received their second dose on Monday. Ms Hansen was optimistic that authorities would get the outbreak under control.

As Victoria lives through day three of a full lockdown it’s been promised will last a week, the blame shifting over who is responsible for the latest COVID outbreak and who should pick up the bill has reached a fever pitch.

The reality is complicated - The first known case picked up the virus in hotel quarantine in South Australia. But there are serious questions over the vaccine rollout, the management of aged care facilities and the Victorian contact tracing capability.

Today on the Please Explain podcast The Age’s state political editor Annika Smethurst joins Tory Maguire to discuss the latest on Victoria’s snap seven-day “circuit breaker” lockdown.

We’ve been talking a lot about the federal government’s rollout of the vaccination program - particularly in aged care facilities.

Homes were to be vaccinated in phase 1a of the rollout, which began on February 22 and was meant to be completed in six weeks.

Last week, we found out 16 aged care homes in Victoria have not had any coronavirus shots. Compare that to Victoria’s rollout.

Under the federal program’s guidelines, states are responsible for inoculating frontline healthcare workers, quarantine workers, and public sector aged care workers and residents.

COVID-19 Commander Jeroen Weimar today revealed the state had jabbed 100 per cent of frontline healthcare workers in the 1a category, and about 85 per cent of the wider healthcare workforce.

He said 100 per cent of quarantine workers had also been jabbed, and the government administered the first dose of the vaccine to everyone involved in the public aged care system by April 19.

Mr Weimar said about two-thirds of residents and staff in public aged care had received their second dose of the vaccine.

The Department of Health later clarified Mr Weimar’s statement to say ‘practically all’ frontline workers who were eligible and wanted a vaccine had received one.

Vaccine Operations Centre head Commodore Eric Young said all 596 of Victoria’s aged care facilities have had first dose visits, and 382 of those have received second doses meaning 36 per cent were still waiting for second doses in the coming weeks.

The number of aged care staff who have been vaccinated remains unclear, with the federal government working to compile data from GP clinics and state-run hubs to find out the total.

There were 30,701 vaccine doses administered nationwide yesterday and more than two thirds (20,909 in total) of those were given to people in Victoria.

The figure of 20,909 Victorians vaccinated on Sunday is a bit lower than in previous days - as you can see from the graph below - but keep in mind that on weekends far fewer people tend to get vaccinated than on weekdays:

You can check out the daily vaccination progress of your state or territory using the interactive table below. By default it shows a progress bar, but click one of the arrows for each state/territory and it will extend out into a graph.

To bring up the daily totals, click the ‘daily’ button.

Some states, such as Queensland, show a single-day surge on April 18 that exceeds any day since - this is because of delayed dose data being added to the state’s tally, not because there was a stampede to get vaccinated on that day.Check out our detailed vaccine data tracker here.

MLC Principal Diana Vernon has written to parents and guardians of students at the private girls college informing them that a staff member who tested positive for coronavirus was not infectious when they were at the school.

“As a result, the 7-12 campus will reopen tomorrow, 1st June, in line with restricted operations during the current lockdown,” she said in a note to parents.

Another school will shut for deep cleaning after a student tested positive for COVID-19 in Melbourne’s North.

Catholic secondary school, Mercy College in Coburg said the student didn’t attend the campus for most of last week but all students must now study remotely.

The news follows a number of other school closures around Melbourne including Methodist Ladies College in Kew.

The Department of Health is investigating the time-frame the student was infectious.

In a message to parents and guardians, Principal Lila McInerney said “contact -tracing
will involve identifying any person who may have been in close contact with the affected student after May 24″.

Students are advised to remain at home while contact tracing occurs. They must limit movements to home based activities and not attend public places.”

“We will update all families once the contact tracing has been completed and a decision about reopening the school facilities for students is made” she said.

The school is not yet to be added to the official list of exposure sites.

A Footscray aged care home is no longer in lockdown after a staff member who had worked at a facility where a positive case was identified tested negative.

The Royal Freemasons aged care facility in Footscray returned to normal operations on Monday afternoon after about 24 hours in lockdown.

The operations of the other Royal Freemasons aged care facility in lockdown - Coppin Centre on Punt Road - remains unchanged.

“Royal Freemasons can confirm that COVID testing of staff and residents at Coppin Centre and Footscray homes has been completed,” a staff member.

“Thus far, all residents and staff returned negative test result. The Footscray staff member, a tier two contact, returned a negative test result. Given this, the Department of Health and Human Services advised that the Footscray home can ‘stand down’ and return to normal operations.”

The spokesman said the service was yet to receive the test results of a second staff member who worked at the Coppin Centre last week, however all results from staff so far who worked at that site have been negative.

“There are still a small number of test results to be returned, and the home will remain in lockdown with all infection control measures in place until we obtain all test results.”

He said that all residents in Royal Freemasons homes have been offered their first dose of the COVID-19 and many have had their second.

Here’s a further defence from Health Minister Greg Hunt of allowing staff to move between aged care facilities, saying it is needed for “flexibility”.

However, many of the things that he mentions are allowed even if staff are constrained to one facility, such as allowing in doctors and people to conduct coronavirus tests.

“One of the things which has been very strongly reinforced is the need to ensure that there are adequate staff resources for residents’ safety,” he said.

“So that means for example, it is absolutely critical that we can have testing staff, moving between the sites, vaccination staff move between sites, and clinical first responders, exactly as we are now, with the need to cover those that are ill, the real and the need for surge workforce, so all of those things show the need for flexibility.

“Having said that, the advice we have is that in the Greater Melbourne region as an example it’s approximately 4.7 per cent of staff who have worked across different sites.”