Coronavirus: Supercharged teams for aged-care response

Aged-care rapid response centres to be set up in all states, territories to get ahead of potential COVID-19 outbreaks.

Scott Morrison in Canberra on Friday. Picture: Gary Ramage

National cabinet will agree to the urgent creation of aged-care rapid response centres in all states and territories in a bid to get ahead of potential COVID-19 outbreaks in nursing homes around the nation.

The new co-ordination bodies will be similar to the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre, which brings together federal and state emergency management, the Australian Defence Force, clinical support, infection control specialists and medical experts, including geriatricians and specialist aged-care nurses.

They hope to ensure nursing homes are adequately resourced to prevent outbreaks and, if a posit­ive case is found, to quickly co-ordinate the deployment of resource­s to stop further infection, including a surge workforce to cover staff required to isolate.

Scott Morrison and state and territory leaders had extensive discussions at last week’s national cabinet meeting about how lessons­ from the Victorian corona­virus outbreak in nursing homes could be used to protect vulnerable residents in all states.

The Prime Minister, who said on Friday he was “deeply sorry” the nation’s aged-care system had fallen short on occasions but “completely rejected” accusations his government had no COVID-19 aged-care plan, is understood to have agreed with state and territory leaders that the new co-ordination centres should be quickly deployed.

Plans will also be put to national cabinet next week for face-to-face infection control training rather than online modules, mandatory use of face masks by nursing home staff, and a broad audit of emergency response cap­a­bilities in all states and territories.

Workforce shortages have been a critical issue in Victoria as the second coronavirus wave continues, with more than 1000 healthcare workers testing positive to the virus and hundreds more isolating as close contacts.

The increasing number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the state’s nursing homes is ramping up pressure on the Morrison government, which has responsibility for aged care. On Friday, 12 more nursing home residents in Victoria died, 188 in total since the first death on July 11.

There are more than 1000 active­ COVID-positive nursing home residents in the state, and the current mortality rate for Australians older than 80 who catch the virus is about one in five. Victoria’s health department confirmed on Friday that 119 nursing homes were currently linked to active cases.

Counsel assisting the aged-care royal commission Peter Rozen excoriated the federal governmen­t’s handling of the sector during COVID-19 on Thursday, saying it had failed to heed the lessons of earlier outbreaks in which 23 residents died at Newmarch House and Dorothy Henderson Lodge in Sydney.

Mr Rozen said there was still no proper plan in place and accused the government of “hubris” and “self-congratulation” during April, May and June before the second wave of COVID struck.

Mr Morrison “completely’’ rejected the allegation the government had no plan for a corona­virus outbreak in aged care, and said suggestions of complacency were wrong and not fair on those in the sector working hard to protec­t vulnerable residents.

He said the circumstances that caused outbreaks in Newmarch House and Dorothy Henderson Lodge were different from Victoria’s situation, which had been driven by community transmission. But he acknowledged there had been failures in the response, and said he was “deeply sorry” about times when the system let residents and their families down.

“On some days the pandemic gets the better of us, and on other days it doesn’t,” Mr Morrison said. “On the days that the system falls short, on the days that ex­pec­t­­ations are not met, I’m deeply sorry about that. I know that ev­ery­one who is involved in the process who is trying to meet those expectations is equally sorry.

“On days where workforces are completely stripped from facilitie­s and there is nobody there, and you scramble for a workforce to try to put them in place, and you have ADF officers who go there at 11 at night to try to clean up the mess, that‘s not good enough.”

Anthony Albanese said the government should accept aged-care royal commissioner Tony Pagone’s call to establish an aged-care-specific national co-ordinating body to run the sector’s COVID-19 response.

“When I think of what is going on in aged-care facilities at the moment, some of the stories that I‘m hearing, the pictures that we’re seeing, my heart is shredded,” the Opposition Leader said.

“The fact is, that too many of our sons and daughters of our World War II veterans are saying their final goodbyes to their parents­ over FaceTime. Our incred­ible aged-care workers are holding the hands of our precious elderly as they pass.

“We urge the government to act on this as a matter of urgency and therefore to use that body to make sure that there‘s appropriate staff … appropriate training.”

The nation’s Acting Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre was fulfilling that role where the main outbreak was occurring.

His predecessor Brendan Murphy, now the federal health secretary, also defended the governmen­t’s aged-care response in a fiery exchange during a Senate inquiry.

“When you have a very, very low death rate generally, then the aged-care death rate as a proportio­n is high,” Professor Murphy said.

“It’s been an awful situation, but to interpret a percentage of an extremely low death rate as an example of poor aged care management is simply not defensible.’’