The Department of Health Secretary has conceded that establishing the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre (VACRC) just a week earlier could have impacted on the now-663 deaths recorded among residents in Victorian aged care homes.
Giving evidence to the Senate committee’s inquiry into the Government’s response to the pandemic, Dr Murphy said that early on in the pandemic, both NSW and Victoria had had a rapid response and containment of outbreaks – a reference to Dorothy Henderson Lodge and Newmarch House.
But while the Government was concerned about increasing cases in Victoria during June, the Secretary said it was only in mid- to late July that the Department realised that the state’s public health response was not containing the virus and set up the VACRC on 25 July.
“I think if the public health response had been more prompt, we might have avoided some of the scale of the outbreaks in Victoria, and obviously we’re looking at, for example, if we had stood up the Victorian aged care response centre, early on, if we had been aware, if we’d had prior warning the public health response may have been compromised, that’s something that might have prevented some of the spread amongst facilities by responding more quickly,” he said.
“And obviously, you know, one of the lessons that we have learned, out of the Victorian outbreak is that infection prevention control training which was done widely across the sector needs to be regularly reinforced and that’s certainly something that the Victorian aged care response centre has been pursuing in facilities in Victoria.”
As in previous evidence to the enquiry, Dr Murphy blamed widespread community transmission for the high rate of positive cases in residential care.
“It’s not possible to say what proportion could have been prevented as we’ve said on many occasions once you have widespread community outbreaks, aged care outbreaks and unfortunately, deaths, particularly for people who are very frail and close to end of life are inevitable, but largely with the benefit of hindsight and in responding with a response centre, as I said a little bit earlier, we may have been able to prevent some of some of the spread,” he stated.
“I think we would always look at every, every episode that happens and see what else we could learn.”
The enquiry heard there are still 83 active coronavirus cases among aged care residents in Victoria with three new cases in the past 24 hours – all among staff.
We would hope the Department is learning from this fact.
