Coronavirus Australia: Home, alone, and in hell as crisis engulfs Melbourne’s aged care homes

Victoria’s nursing homes fighting devastating virus outbreak, with eight residents dead and infection numbers soaring.

Paramedics take a resident of St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Melbourne’s north to hospital on Friday. Picture: Aaron Francis

Victoria’s nursing homes are fighting a devastating coronavirus outbreak, with eight residents dying in two days, elderly patients evacuated from the worst-hit facilities, and infection numbers soaring to more than 450.

Federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck and bureaucrats held emergency talks with nursing home operators on Friday night in a bid to stem the outbreaks, which have claimed 22 lives this month.

As authorities struggled to contain the aged care crisis, the Andrews government reported 300 new infections statewide on Friday. Five of the seven coronavirus deaths in the previous 24 hours were nursing home residents.

Three months after Sydney’s Newmarch nursing home tragedy, which claimed 17 lives, Victoria’s situation suggests authorities failed to heed the lessons and better prepare for an outbreak.

Aged care provider groups accused the state and federal governments of failing their residents in the midst of this pandemic.

Leading Aged Services Australia, which represents 213 members in Victoria, said providers were not getting support from governments in relation to personal protective equipment, staffing, hospital transfers and COVID testing.

The Weekend Australian understands the crisis talks failed to produce any concrete commitments to counter the deadly surge.

Victoria’s second coronavirus wave has struck 40 nursing homes. On Friday at the worst-hit facility, St Basil’s Home for the Aged in the northern Melbourne suburbs of Fawkner, elderly residents were evacuated by ambulance officers in hazmat suits.

Families of residents at St Basil’s, where at least 73 patients and staff members have tested positive, say they have been left in the dark about the fate of their loved ones. Dozens of bags containing hazardous material have been piled high outside the home.

Four patient transport vehicles pulled into St Basil’s on Friday afternoon. Once inside, paramedics put personal protective equipment over their uniforms.

In a corner of the facility, yellow garbage bags of medical waste littered the ground beneath an overflowing bin. “You’d think they’d take the bins out,” said a neighbour who did not give her name.

LASA acting chief advocate Tim Hicks criticised the government for failing to offer providers any practical help in the deadly battle against COVID-19.

“Almost two weeks ago the government promised millions of masks to aged care providers to help them keep their residents safe,” Mr Hicks said.

“Despite this many providers report being turned away because they do not have outbreaks, and even services with confirmed cases are reporting unacceptable delays in having the PPE they requested delivered.

“The commonwealth needs to follow through on their commitment and if they can’t provide required masks they need to fund providers to procure their own.”

Earlier this week the federal and Victorian governments announced measures to reduce the risk of cross-infection between homes by having aged care staff work at one site only, and to support providers to fund the move. But providers say they remain in the dark about how this will be achieved. “We have not yet seen any detail on what those measures will actually involve, causing immense confusion and distress among providers and staff,” Mr Hicks said. “I know of one provider who has 38 shifts over a fortnight to fill –—where are these staff going to come from?”

A worker dumps another bag of clinical waste outside St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Melbourne’s north on Friday. Picture: Ian Currie

The aged care sector has pushed for all COVID-positive nursing home residents to be removed immediately from the home and transferred to hospital, but the state and federal governments continue to act on advice from the AHPPC that this should be done on a case-by-case basis.

Aged and Community Services Australia chief executive Pat Sparrow said some providers had sent residents with COVID to hospital only for them to be refused admission.

“The state government and public health units are making the call that if (there hasn’t been an outbreak) the hospital has turned around and sent them back,” Ms Sparrow said,

She said the high numbers of aged care workers who were either COVID positive or in quarantine because they might have been exposed while working in a nursing home is set to cause significant staff shortages. Even the government’s “surge workforce” could quickly be overwhelmed.

“It’s getting more and more difficult even for the surge workforce, or for the agencies that we would normally go to, to get staff,” Ms Sparrow said.

“That’s why we think we need an overall plan about how we make sure we’ve got staff and (that may) mean bringing staff in from interstate, or using the military, or using students who had additional training.”

Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday there had been 447 cases of COVID-19 linked to 35 aged care sites in the state. On Friday five more facilities were added to the tally, but the number of cases was not updated.

Victoria’s largest current aged care clusters are: 73 cases linked to St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner, in Melbourne’s north; 68 cases linked to Estia Health in Ardeer in the west; and 37 cases linked to Arcare Aged Care in Craigieburn in the outer north.

Council on the Ageing chief executive Ian Yates said it was clear most of the infections in aged care in Melbourne were coming in to facilities through staff. While most nursing homes had COVID-19 response plans in place, he was concerned some had not put them into practice.

“When you get an infection, inevitably there’s a degree of panic,” Mr Yates said. If you haven’t actually practised in advance, do people know exactly what they need to do?

“It’s very clear to me and others what you do in that first 24 hours is really critical. What are your plans for isolating someone who has COVID? Do you straight away separate the staff dealing with that person to other staff or are they having lunch together? Are you using your own organisation support to make sure you’ve got backup staff, even if you don’t need them? Making sure you go through the screening processes, the ­hygiene training processes, ­infection control. It’s not good enough that it’s happened once. It has to happen every shift, every staff member.”

The Weekend Australian can reveal the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has expanded its workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic and ahead of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety handing down its final report in November.

Analysis of contracts published this week by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission reveals almost $25m has been allocated to multiple recruitment agencies for “temporary personnel services”.

The commission is also advertising jobs for “non-ongoing” full-time senior quality assessors and complaints officers across all major capital cities, with applications closing in December.

Additional reporting: Rosie Lewis, Remy Varga, Geoff Chambers