Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health and Aged Care Minister Greg Hunt have announced that four teams of Australian Defence Force (ADF) members will be placed at 24 hours’ notice to help aged care operators in “acute situations” this afternoon.
The number of teams will increase to up to 10 teams at 24 hours’ notice and will work with the health departments and public health agencies in each of the States and Territories and the Aged Care Minister.
Aged care providers have reported widespread workforce shortages due to the Omicron wave, but Minister Hunt said the latest update from the Department of Health was that currently, about 5,900 staff out of a workforce of 280,000 were furloughed because of COVID-19 – the equivalent to about 5% of the workforce at the impacted facilities.
PM has previously rejected calls for ADF support
The announcement is a turn-around from Mr Morrison’s rejection of calls from aged care peaks and unions for ADF support in Australia’s aged care homes just two-and-a-half weeks ago.
“As I said several weeks ago, the Defence Force are not a surrogate workforce for the aged care sector,” said the Prime Minister.
“There are around 285,000 people who work in the aged care sector.
“So, the idea that the defence forces can come in and just replace all of the shifts that are lost because people have COVID-19, we already relaxed the close contact rule and that had a real positive impact.
“But the idea the defence forces could just simply come in and fill that gap is just not realistic.”
1,700 ADF personnel on stand-by
Mr Morrison said the teams will include a registered nurse team leader, some medical technicians and personnel to support general duties.
“In each State and Territory, it will begin with around 50 personnel going to support each State and up to 200,” he said.
“So, we’ll have up to around 1,700 defence force personnel assisting.”
A total of 533 aged care residents have died from COVID-19 this year according to Department of Health data published on 4 February 2022.
We will have more on this story in Thursday’s SOURCE.
