Disabled Covid-19 jab policy ‘seriously deficient, grossly unfair’, says Royal Commission report

The federal government’s approach to vaccinating the disabled has been ‘seriously deficient’, a Royal Commission report finds.

NDIS Minister Linda Reynolds. Picture: NCA NewsWire

The Morrison government’s approach to vaccinating disabled Australians has been “seriously deficient”, a new royal commission report has found, with aged-care homes secretly prioritised over group homes in the first months of the rollout.

The draft report, released on Monday, also calls on state and territory governments to not ease restrictions until all Australians with a disability have had an opportunity to receive both jabs, regardless of whether the 70 per cent national vaccine threshold has been met.

“In our view, it would be grossly unfair, indeed unconscionable, if any people with disability who have not been given the opportunity to be fully vaccinated by the time the 70 per cent threshold is reached are denied the freedoms available to people who have been fully vaccinated,” it says.

“The unfairness is magnified once it is accepted – as it must be – that increased freedoms for the fully vaccinated increases the risk of contracting Covid-19 for people who are not fully vaccinated.”

The report found the Department of Health massively underestimated the number of people in disability care when designing its vaccine strategy, which had ­“significant implications” for the rollout.

People With Disability Australia chief executive Sebastian Zagarella said disabled Australians had been treated like “second-class citizens” during the rollout and there was huge concern for their health as the nation started to reopen after months of restrictions.

“That’s because many people with disability are at greater risk of sickness and death if they get infected with Covid, which is why people with disability were supposed to be prioritised for vaccin­ations and be double-dosed back in April,” he said.

“However, the latest figures from the federal government show that vaccination rates for people with disability are still way too low,” he said. “With just over a third of NDIS participants, less than two-thirds of NDIS participants in shared residential accommodation and just over half of NDIS screened support workers having received two doses.”

Mr Zagarella said the government’s lack of consultative planning and unclear messaging had created confusion and distrust within the disability community.

The disability royal commission said the government’s failure to make its March decision to focus on aged care public meant disability care residents and workers were “misled” for six weeks into believing they were a priority.

The report says the decision effectively “halted the administration of vaccines to people in residential disability accommo­dation even though they were in Phase 1a” of the strategy.

The report also takes aim at the government over the creation of vaccine hesitancy within the disability community, declaring the lack of clear information “damaged the credibility and perceived trustworthiness of the Australian government among many people with disability.”

Opposition NDIS spokesman Bill Shorten said the report showed the Morrison government had failed to protect people with disabilities at every stage of the vaccine rollout as he called for a vaccine blitz to protect disabled Australians from Covid-19.