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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2022-02-10 Daily Xml
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COVID-19 Aged Care

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (14:52): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding COVID.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.E. HANSON: Federal reports show that 90 aged-care residents have died with COVID in South Australia this year. The opposition have been contacted by families who are concerned their loved ones have still not had their vaccines. My questions to the minister are:

1. Did the minister ensure that the vast majority of aged-care residents had their booster doses before the government opened the borders?

2. How many residents in aged care were still waiting for their booster dose before the government opened the borders?

3. Was there any modelling on the impact of Omicron on aged care before the government ignored the advice of Professor Spurrier to close the borders because of the Omicron variant?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:53): I am not going to go through the factual errors that were inserted or sprinkled through that statement; for example, the suggestion that the government had advice from Professor Spurrier to close the borders. The fact of the matter is, the advice that Professor Spurrier gives is to the State Coordinator. It was the State Coordinator's decision.

The suggestion that somehow we weren't planning for the impact on residential aged-care facilities just doesn't tally with the facts. On 28 October 2021, the decision was made by SA Health that as we opened the borders we would have to change our strategy to deliver care to residents of residential aged-care facilities. Up until that time, it had been South Australia's practice to relocate every COVID-positive patient from a residential aged-care facility to hospital at diagnosis.

Our planning for the opening of the borders, our planning for living with COVID, indicated to us that it was not possible. If we were leaving, as the rest of the nation was and is, every single state in Australia is going to open its borders and Western Australia is, if you like, the last state to achieve that. In relation to living with COVID, the decision was made in late October that it was no longer sustainable in a non-elimination environment to do the transfers of all residents.

Discussions were had with the aged-care industry. They were very concerned about the change, but the reality is the Omicron wave has shown it would not have been possible to have every active case in a residential aged-care facility in hospital, and also it would not be necessary. Many residents, even many older people, have relatively mild symptoms. If the Labor Party is suggesting that every COVID-positive person who is in a residential aged-care facility should be transferred to a hospital, it would just highlight that they are not fit to run the health system.

We will continue to work with the aged-care industry. It has been my practice since I have been minister to meet regularly with the aged-care industry during the COVID pandemic. Our teams meet regularly, my understanding is almost weekly, particularly in peak periods, to discuss the COVID pandemic. In relation to our close liaison with the commonwealth, we actually have an aged-care response group that meets daily.

In relation to the honourable member's questions about boosters, again let's just try to remember history. The booster did not become available for older South Australians until, I think, 9 November. That is a commonwealth decision. The commonwealth, through ATAGI, gets advice. So, in terms of availability alone, it was only available for older people relatively late in the year. Because of the necessary gaps between the two AstraZeneca doses, which was the vaccine being used by older people, together with the period to the booster, even when the boosters were available in early November, many residents of aged-care facilities would not have been eligible to get a booster.

Again, the opposition seems to have wonderful powers of hindsight, which perhaps they should have used in their 16 years of previous government. In relation to Omicron, which was not even identified in the world until after we had opened the borders, it's a bit rich to say, 'You should have had the third booster available'—for a variant that was yet to emerge. These are decisions that have to be made in a dynamic pandemic environment, but they will be made on public health advice and not on the basis of Labor Party press releases.

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