The head of Australia’s peak aged care body has linked New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet’s decision to lift Covid restrictions late last year to the deaths of hundreds of aged care residents.
Appearing before a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the government’s response to Covid-19 on Friday, the chief executive of Aged and Community Services Australia, Paul Sadler, said his organisation – which represents not-for-profit aged care homes – had in December raised the risks posed to the sector from a widespread lifting of restrictions once cases of Omicron began appearing in the community.
“Of course what happened was the premier made the decision to continue down the pathway of opening up and within days the number of outbreaks in residential [facilities] skyrocketed and there are now hundreds of deaths in NSW in aged care since that decision was taken,” Sadler said.
But the health minister, Brad Hazzard, told the inquiry he could not recall the advice, saying it “certainly wasn’t on my agenda” in the lead up to 15 December, and that the government had been “constantly weighing up” competing interests before reopening the state.
Appearing ahead of Hazzard, Sadler told the committee that after the first case of Omicron was recorded in NSW at the end of November, he had urged the government “to be very careful” because of a lack of supply of rapid antigen tests and the risk of widespread staff shortages in the event of a large outbreak.
“We were already flagging with the NSW government that, for goodness sake be very careful, we don’t think we’re prepared sufficiently because there’s not the supply of rapid antigen tests from the federal government yet [and] because there would be other potential consequences on the work force if there was widespread community transmission,” he said.
But he said the warning was ignored. The government lifted a number of Covid-19 restrictions on 15 December, including on indoor mask mandates and density limits. The restrictions were reinstated eight days later on 23 December but Sadler said by then cases in the sector had “skyrocketed”.
Sadler’s testimony was echoed by the chief executive of aged care provider Warrigal Care, Mark Sewell, who told the inquiry that during discussions with both aged care providers and the business community in the lead up to easing restrictions he witnessed “two worlds that clashed”.
“It would be fair to say it is universally accepted now that [the reopening] happened too quickly,” he said. “Inevitably it needed to happen for Australia to get back to work but it should have been delayed until the middle of January.”
But appearing before the committee both Hazzard and the health secretary, Elizabeth Koff, said they could not recall being given that advice prior to lifting restrictions, with the minister saying the government had taken advice from both the health department as well as a number of other agencies.
“We were certainly looking at all aspects of the community as we always have [but] that information certainly wasn’t something I remember being at the forefront of discussions,” Hazzard said.
He pointed to growing community dissatisfaction in the lead up to 15 December, and the need to balance the health advice with the advice of other agencies such as treasury and police, and had taken the “cautious” decision to delay the reopening from the original date of 1 December.
“We were constantly weighing up [that advice, and asking] how do we take the community with us,” he said.
Despite Covid case numbers exploding across Australia once the Omicron outbreak occurred, the decision by Perrottet to lift restrictions on 15 December has continued to dog the state government.
Last month the Guardian revealed health officials in NSW had warned the government that vaccines “may be less effective” against the Omicron variant and could lead to an increase in hospitalisations, just days before Perrottet announced Covid-19 restrictions would be scrapped.
