Coronavirus Australia: Governments argue as elderly death toll rises

Extra nurses, doctors rushed into Melbourne aged-care facilities as relationship between Morrison, Andrews governments fractures.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews says federally regulated aged-care providers are struggling to maintain staffing levels and basic standards of care. Picture: David Crosling

Extra nurses, doctors and paramedics are being rushed into Melbourne aged-care facilities at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak killing elderly patients, as the relationship between the Morrison and Andrews governments publicly fractures and the Victorian Premier declares nursing homes unsafe.

Daniel Andrews said he would not send his mother into federal homes, prompting Scott Morrison’s Health Minister, Greg Hunt, to retaliate by declaring the deadly outbreak was a result of the state government’s bungled hotel quarantine regime.

As the Prime Minister cut short a trip to Queensland to rush back to deal with a crisis that has now claimed 39 elderly lives, Mr Andrews declared “I wouldn’t let my Mum be in some of these places”, in an attack over the quality of federal government-regulated nursing homes.

Mr Hunt said an Australian Medical Assistance Team, including doctors, nurses, paramedics and allied health experts, would be swung into action in Victorian nursing homes in coming days.

Nurses will be redeployed from interstate, the Australian Defence Force and Victorian private hospitals, in addition to the AUSMAT team, which Mr Hunt described as the “SAS of the medical world”.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt. Picture: AAP

Mr Hunt said the government was also working to source additional nursing capacity from interstate, and had committed a further five million face masks and 500,000 reusable face shields from the national stockpile to the containment effort.

The Australian can reveal that the Morrison government had been trying to persuade Victoria to abandon all non-urgent elective surgery for more than a week before Mr Andrews announced the decision to do so on Tuesday.

Sources close to the crisis have suggested more elderly people could have been evacuated from COVID-ridden facilities had the Andrews government suspended elective surgery earlier, enabling state health workers and hospitals to treat aged-care patients.

Announcing the move, Mr Andrews blamed the federally regulated aged-care providers, saying it was clear some were struggling to maintain staffing levels and basic standards of care.

“I cannot stand here and tell you that I have confidence that staff and management across a number of private sector aged-care facilities are able to provide the care that is appropriate to keep their residents safe,’’ Mr Andrews said.

“I won’t stand here also and say, ‘Oh, well, this is just a commonwealth government matter’. We don’t run this sector but the residents in these homes are all Victorians. The commonwealth government has asked for help and that is exactly what my government and our agencies will provide to them.”

He added: “If anyone had any doubts about the need for that royal commission, hopefully that’s now beyond doubt.”

Mr Hunt hit back, lashing Victorian hospitals for refusing to admit aged-care residents, and saying he couldn’t imagine his father, who spent the final months of his life in aged care, receiving better care than he did.

Mr Hunt also made several pointed references to the origins of Victoria’s second wave of -coronavirus infections. A high proportion if not all of the state’s current cases are genomically linked to breaches in the Andrews government’s hotel quarantine system.

Scott Morrison in Mooloolaba before cutting short his Queensland trip on Tuesday. Picture: Richard Walker

“Let us go back to the source of this: a massive breach of hotel quarantine,” Mr Hunt said.

The COVID-19 death toll in Victoria’s aged-care sector reached 39 on Tuesday, while there have been 769 infections across staff and residents in more than 80 nursing homes.

All but five of the 769 cases were in private and not-for-profit facilities regulated by the federal government. The political stoush came just short of the halfway mark of the six-week lockdown of Melbourne’s metropolitan area and the Mitchell Shire, amid signs the second wave COVID-19 count may have peaked.

Nationally, there were 398 new cases reported on Tuesday, with Victoria recording 384. This was down from the worst day of the crisis so far on Monday: 549 new cases including Victoria’s 532. Victoria had six new deaths, including four from aged-care homes. State Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the numbers remained “volatile” but he anticipated the “R-number”, which reveals the rate of growth in cases in the community, would be near or below 1, putting “downward pressure on transmission in the community”.

 

The Australian understands Mr Andrews was advised by federal Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy last week to free up nurses and hospital space to treat nursing home residents, but initially failed to act, prompting an intervention from Mr Morrison with phone calls between the Premier and Prime Minister on Monday night and Tuesday morning.

Mr Hunt said he would “not hear a word against” aged-care staff following Mr Andrews’ comments. “I cannot imagine better care that my family and my father could have got and I speak, I think, for hundreds of thousands of families around the country,” he said.

Mr Andrews defended some public hospitals refusing to treat aged-care residents.

“If a private aged-care provider basically decides that they have nowhere near the clinical capacity, COVID or no COVID, and they would like their entire aged-care facility to be moved en masse to a public hospital, less based on clinical need but more based on the fact that they’re not interested in doing this work, then absolutely hospitals have the right to say no,” the Premier said.

“I don’t have 50,000 beds, we will never have 50,000 beds that we can simply hand over.”

Additional reporting: Olivia Caisley, John Ferguson, Richard Ferguson