The family of an aged-care resident and experts have slammed the federal government’s response to the Omicron outbreak that has led to the deaths of hundreds of elderly people, calling it “a failure of planning”.
There were 29 active outbreaks of COVID-19 in Australian aged care facilities on 26 November – the same week the World Health Organization designated Omicron “a variant of concern”, according to data from the Department of Health late last year.
That number has now risen to 1,261, according to data released by the government on Friday.
There are now about 30,000 active cases of COVID-19 related to aged care, with almost half of them resident cases and the remaining staff cases.
The COVID-19-related death rate in this sector has been mounting, too. More than 400 aged care residents have died of the disease this year, with NSW on Sunday reporting 31 of the 52 deaths in that day's reporting period were of aged care residents.
According to experts and aged care residents, a slow booster-rollout program is one of the key reasons for these dire numbers.
“We were given a consent form to sign in November but my husband only received [his booster] last week,” Adelaide-based Kay Rollison told SBS News.
Ms Rollison’s 78-years-old husband, Robert, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2019 and has been living in an aged care facility in the suburb of Payneham in Adelaide’s east since.
Ms Rollison said she was desperate for her husband to receive the booster dose, but every time he was scheduled to receive it, there was a COVID-19 outbreak in his aged care facility, with his booster appointment being moved to a later day.
“I was really angry and really stressed. And I was very anxious for three months, waiting for it to happen,” she said.
According to epidemiologist Nancy Baxter, Ms Rollison’s case is not unique.
“When the new variant was identified and there was evidence it was far more transmissible, we didn’t take the action we needed to ensure that all the aged-care facilities were boosted,” Professor Baxter, head of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne, told SBS News.
Nancy Baxter, head of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. Source: Supplied
Compared with countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, it took Australia far too long to shorten the gap between the second dose of the COVID-19 and the booster shot, Professor Baxter said.
“It was a failure of planning and a failure of agility of planning ... none of [it] was managed in the context of the real risk to aged-care facilities in terms of outbreaks and deaths.”
An acute shortage of rapid antigen tests exacerbated the problem, Ian Yates, chief executive of Council on the Ageing, told SBS News.
“The concern we’ve had from the very beginning when things started to open up is that aged care needed access to rapid antigen tests, so that staff could test ahead of each shift or at least every couple of days,” he said.
“And that’s not always been the case and that’s part of the problem at the moment,” Mr Yates said.
Staff shortages across the aged care sector also contributed to more outbreaks, Sean Rooney, chief executive of Leading Age Services Australia, told SBS news.
“What we’re seeing now with the Omicron outbreak, it’s just highlighting the structural deficiencies in the aged care system identified by the royal commission [last year] and that is that we don’t have enough staff,” Mr Rooney said.
“We need more staff – we need them better skilled and qualified, and we need them to be better paid. And furthermore, aged-care services need to be effectively funded to be able to deliver consistently high standards of care,” he said.
The damning royal commission into the sector was handed to the government in the first quarter of 2021 and recommended an increase in the award wages of workers in the sector, suggesting the industry should coordinate a consensus position on this front that included the federal government.
“But several of the things that they acknowledged were important were not addressed by the government, most notably the need to improve wages for aged-care workers,” Mr Rooney said, adding the worst may not necessarily be over yet.
“Our big fear is that we will see this wave of Omicron pass but the experts are telling us there will be future waves.
“And we also know we’re coming into winter with open international borders, [and] seasonal influenza is also a risk.
“We need to be assured that the people on the front line are resourced and enabled in aged care to keep the vulnerable people safe,” Mr Rooney said.
SBS News has contacted the Department of Health for comment.
