A security guard who shared a house with an aged care worker has been identified as the first formal link made between Victoria’s calamitous hotel quarantine program and the spread of coronavirus to an aged care home.
Embracia operates two Melbourne homes. Its Avondale Heights home has had a major outbreak involving five deaths and 32 residents and staff, as well as another 14 people connected to the centre. The group’s other home is in Reservoir, where there have been just two cases.
In a media release in June, the DHHS announced new cases of coronavirus from the Rydges hotel. Later, it noted that a staff member at Embracia Aged Care in Reservoir had also tested positive. Ms McKenzie said while testing had been done swiftly and results returned promptly, efforts by the department to trace the links from staff back to the community were woefully inadequate.
She said letting the department’s Public Health Unit know immediately by phone had not been possible – the manager of the facility had “tried three different phone numbers for the public health unit, and no one was answering”. Ms McKenzie also raised a problem at the Avondale Heights home which is reflected across many of Victoria’s 766 aged care homes: when there is a coronavirus case identified, residents are forced to isolate in their rooms for lengthy periods until DHHS gives the all-clear.
“Some residents were refusing tests because they’d had 10 rounds of negative testing and were not being [allowed out of isolation]. They were saying ‘Why should we get tested again?’.”
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