Sharon feels petrified every time she hears of someone in an aged care home in Australia dying of COVID-19.
Her 79-year-old father, Nev, was due for his booster shot in November but still hasn't received it. And there’s no clarity on when he will.
“My father has a number of medical conditions, including hearing difficulties. I find it incredibly frustrating and appalling that he’s still not received his booster,” Sharon, who requested that her surname be withheld, told SBS News.
Nev lives in an aged care facility in the suburb of Doncaster in Melbourne’s east and Sharon said while the staff at the home have gone above and beyond the call of duty, the federal government has let her family down.
“My father had his second dose in May and he was due for his booster in November. The aged care home kept telling us that they’re following up with the Department of Health, trying to find out when they can come out and [deliver those booster shots] and it kept going on [for weeks],” she said.
At the end of December, a nursing unit manager working at the home told Sharon he had been repeatedly calling the Department of Health “but they didn’t have any dates yet and couldn’t give them any information whatsoever”, she said.
Then one morning in January, Sharon received a phone call from the aged care home informing her of a COVID-19 outbreak at the home, and that her father had tested positive.
“My stomach dropped, I felt sick. Disbelief. Then after I hung up, I started to feel angry,” Sharon said, adding that the government’s rollout of the booster shots at aged care facilities has been reactive rather than proactive.
As soon as there was an outbreak of COVID-19 at Nev’s aged care home, they received a date from the health department for booster shots, she said.
“Once there was an outbreak, the home basically contacted the families and said, ‘Oh, we’ve got a date for the boosters.’ I felt like [the government was] booking all the places that had COVID-19 outbreaks for boosters,” Sharon said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the impact of COVID-19 on the aged care sector in Australia is not as bad as it is in some other countries. Source: AAP
While a team of healthcare workers visited the facility on 27 January to administer booster shots, Nev wasn't able to get one.
While his symptoms were mild, his positive COVID-19 status meant he couldn’t get a booster shot.
Four other elderly people in Nev’s wing of the facility, who tested positive to COVID-19 around the same time, found themselves in the same situation, Sharon said.
While Nev has tested negative for COVID-19 recently and his symptoms have all but subsided, Sharon said, he still doesn’t have a date from the health department for his booster shot.
This time, Sharon said, she’ll take things in her own hands.
“We’ve now got the clock running for 14 days before he can be eligible to have a booster, but once those 14 days are over I’m just going to end up taking him out and getting him a booster because who knows when the [federal government] is sending out people again to do the booster shots,” she said.
Sharon’s comments come as Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the federal government’s booster rollout for aged care facilities in Australia.
“We have visited 99 per cent of all aged care facilities and offered all residents in those facilities a booster shot. Seventy per cent of them have taken up those booster shots in those facilities,” Mr Morrison told reporters on Wednesday in Richmond, NSW.
“We have lost around 566 people in our aged care facilities through this most recent wave … Every life that is lost is a great sadness, but every life that is saved is a great blessing,” he said.
Health Minister Greg Hunt on Thursday pointed to hesitancy among aged care residents as being behind low COVID-19 booster rates, with about one-quarter of those eligible not having received a booster shot.
The latest data shows of the 170,000 aged care residents eligible for a booster dose, only 125,000 had received the third jab, leaving 45,000 (or 26 per cent) still unprotected.
According to data received from the Department of Health, 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”.
That number has now risen to 1,261.
But Mr Morrison argued the impact of COVID-19 on the aged care sector in Australia is not as bad as it is in some other countries.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison joins aged care resident Jane Malysiak (left) for a COVID-19 vaccine shot. Source: AAP
“When we look at the outbreaks, there are 13 times greater [casualties in the aged care sector] in Canada than they are in Australia,” he said.
But Sharon is not convinced.
“I would argue that if the Federal Department of Health had rolled out the boosters when due in November, this January’s outbreak [at my father’s aged-care facility] would not have occurred, or been minimal,” she said.
“These are people who have worked all their lives for decades and they’ve just been left in the lurch. And if [the Prime Minister] doesn’t care enough about all these people in aged care facilities then he needs to step aside for someone who does care about them,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health told SBS News "an aged care resident could have at any stage received a booster from their GP or pharmacist, in the same way they receive other health services" .
"Ninety-nine per cent of residential aged care facilities have received a booster clinic with the exception of a very small number of sites.
"Where there has been [an] outbreak the department is working with vaccine providers to provide return visits and they will seek to confirm those dates with the facilities as soon as possible."
SBS News has contacted Nev's aged care facility for comment.
