So there we have it. Nearly three million people are in lockdown across Greater Brisbane, Easter holidays are being cancelled from one end of the country to the other, and it’s down to what?
The failure of managers at Brisbane’s second-largest teaching hospital and their masters at Queensland Health to ensure that those who should have been at the very front of the vaccine queue — doctors and nurses treating COVID-19 patients — actually got the jab.
All sorts of excuses have been trotted out for the breach of containment at Princess Alexandra Hospital that happened not once, but twice — initially when an unvaccinated doctor who dealt with a contagious returned traveller tested positive on March 12, then when an unvaccinated nurse contracted the virus before venturing to Byron Bay for a hen’s party last weekend.
Canberra was to blame, Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said on Tuesday, because the state couldn’t administer vaccine that it didn’t have.
She insisted, wrongly, that Queensland had to withhold enough of the imported Pfizer immuniser to cover the second required dose, when in fact the federal government had already factored this into distribution.
Ms D’Ath’s reasoning was as hollow as claims by Queensland Health that doctors and nurses couldn’t be tracked down to be vaccinated because they worked shifts or missed appointments for the injection.
It beggars belief that arrangements could not be fast-tracked to cover the relatively small but acutely exposed cohort of medical staff at the sharp end of dealing with COVID patients.
Mobile vaccination teams routinely attend aged care homes so why couldn’t a monumentally-resourced operation such as PA Hospital get its act together if there were access problems?
One breakdown in protocols for the doctor infected three weeks ago is explicable given the challenges presented by the new super-contagious UK strain. Presumably, infection control measures and training were reviewed on the back of this.
But the people of Brisbane, locked down in their homes for another day at least and facing the prospect of also spending Easter there, are entitled to ask how it could have been repeated so soon, with such devastating consequences as the twin PA Hospital clusters grow.
Ditto for the many thousands of interstate holidaymakers who have junked or are rethinking plans to head to the Queensland sun, and for the local businesses that were counting on the shot in the arm after 15 long and trying months in the grip of the pandemic.
It inspires zero confidence and that, arguably, is the biggest failing of all.
More Coverage
Lattouf debacle reveals all that’s wrong with the ABC
You’d have to toss a coin to decide which has been the most crass and revelatory episode of the week: Bianca Censori at the Grammys or this shabby affair in Federal Court.
‘You’re verballing me’: PM’s stoush with ABC over popularity dive
Anthony Albanese has locked horns with an ABC Radio host in Alice Springs, after a suggestion that the PM was 'a bit on the nose with the electorate' led to a tense exchange.