There are calls for aged care homes in Victoria to relax their restrictions on families visiting residents after the state saw its coronavirus case numbers in aged care reduce to nil for the first time since June.
Advocacy group Aged Care Matters’ Director Sarah Russell told The Age it was now critical for relatives to resume visits.
“While we’re all celebrating this, there are still aged care homes that are refusing to allow visitors,” Dr Russell said. “They say they’re saving lives, but what type of life is it for an older person not to see the people they love?”
Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) chief executive Craig Gear also told the paper that while home should be able to limit visitors if there was an outbreak in neighbouring suburbs, they want visitor guidelines to return to normal by Christmas.
“You need to have COVID in the area to be able to put restrictions on,” he said. “If there is no COVID in the local community, we can’t see why there can’t be pre-COVID visitation levels.”
Currently, many Victorian homes still have restrictions on visitors, put in place as the state’s second wave resulted in over 4,600 confirmed cases among residents, staff and their close contacts and 655 resident deaths since July.
Other states have also restricted visits throughout the pandemic to limit the risk to residents – though providers were criticised early on for not allowing families to see their loved ones.
As we reported here, an ‘Industry Code for Visiting Residential Aged Care Homes during COVID-19’ was introduced in May after providers and Prime Minister Scott Morrison became involved in a ‘showdown’ over restricted visitation during the early months of the pandemic.
Despite the advocacy calls, Victoria appears to remain cautious about relaxing visitor restrictions.
The State’s Minister for Ageing Luke Donnellan said on Thursday that the final case – an aged care worker – was “a significant milestone”.
“It is critically important that we all remain vigilant and that every step is taken to ensure the sector is better able to withstand any future outbreak,” he said.
Both the State and Federal Government are taking steps to increase visitors however – see the next story.
