Elderly in residential aged care now dying from COVID-19 across Australia at a rate of "10.7 in 1,000 against the total number of nursing home beds". Morrison, his ministers, MPs & senators deserve to be gaoled, not rewarded with another term in federal government. #VoteThenOut
— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) May 13, 2022
“On January 17, as the nation recorded another 39,000 cases of the disease, with hundreds of thousands of active cases, the first phase of the “transitioning to Living with Covid” plan went live at the national hotline…..Health Minister Greg Hunt first announced what was then an information line for people worried about the novel coronavirus on January 31, 2020. Although hosted by healthdirect – a sort of national cabinet for government health advice across every jurisdiction in Australia – the call centres were set up by Stellar Asia Pacific Pty Ltd, now a wholly owned subsidiary of its former rival Probe Group.” [Journalist & author Rick Morton writing in in The Saturday Paper, 5 February 2022]
The Saturday Paper, 5 February 2022:
The centrepiece of the federal government’s “Living with Covid” program is a call centre outsourced to former robo-debt collectors and staffed by workers on casual contracts with no medical experience.
A cache of documents and testimony obtained by The Saturday Paper reveals the inner workings of the National Coronavirus Helpline, which is being run by private-equity owned Probe Group and its subsidiaries on contracts worth more than $270 million.
This information hotline has now been asked to triage people who have tested positive for Covid-19, or who believe they are infected, as part of the Commonwealth’s pivot to managing the disease in the community.
In practice, it has outsourced a key front-line health service to a small battalion of low-paid, poorly trained workers on insecure contracts. People staffing the hotline do not have medical qualifications. Many were previously unemployed and subject to the welfare system’s “mutual obligations”, which threatens penalties and payment suspensions if they refuse reasonable offers of work.
Training offered to new Probe recruits lasts only two hours.
Accounts obtained by The Saturday Paper show workers have described being placed under extreme stress while managing an overwhelming variety of callers, with limited information or ability to actually help them.
For instance, the coronavirus helpline is listed as the No. 1 point of contact on almost every government department, including Home Affairs and for disability and Aboriginal health services, despite there being no specific resources for team members to even provide advice.
Although scripts for call centre operators advise patients to seek rapid antigen tests if they are available, it is not part of the helpline’s remit to actually provide these tests or information on where they might be obtained.
Helpline workers are also fielding calls from people who are experiencing family violence, poverty or other types of extreme stress and are expected to arrange welfare checks or talk them through complex problems with little support.
Where problems do arise, employees are encouraged to phone their team leaders and not put anything in writing to ensure a “quick response”. Employees have requested access to more resources and training but in some cases have had no response from management or, where concerns have been heard, a two-page “cheat sheet” is provided.
There have been frequent occurrences of callers who have been given incorrect isolation advice from the National Coronavirus Helpline or who have complained about misleading public statements by politicians compared with the advice for different jurisdictions offered by the hotline.
In other cases, callers have been directed to see a doctor but have been sent away from GP clinics and even emergency departments, contrary to the advice offered over the helpline…..
Read the full article here.
Crikey, 27 January 2022:
Three Coalition senators have broken ranks to side with Labor (and the crossbench) in questioning the government’s pandemic approach, Guardian Australia reports.
Nationals Matt Canavan and Sam McMahon along with Liberal Gerard Rennick are backing a royal commission or inquiry into the Coalition’s handling of COVID-19 (incidentally, those three also crossed the floor to vote against vaccine mandates, as Sky News reported). Independent Rex Patrick wrote to Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week to ask for one, while independent Zali Steggall is working on draft terms of reference.
It comes amid warnings that the rapid antigen test shortage could stick around for “many months” — industry heavyweights told the SMH this morning that we could make two million of the RATs a week by spending $20 million — chump change for the government — on production lines. Pathology Technology Australia’s boss added that 99% of RAT kits sold here are imported, even though Australian companies Ellume, Lumos Diagnostic, and AnteoTech have all developed tests (which are sold overseas).
Also this morning the National Retailers Association says staff are only trickling back into work amidst the relaxed close contact rule for essential workers, The Australian ($) says. Employees are returning to distribution centres at a rate of 2% a day, while about 30% of staff at meat processing centres remain absent at the moment. National cabinet is meeting today to discuss supply chain issues, as well as the country’s rate of hospitalisations and deaths.
*
Looking for body language experts out there. Just in case my interpretation of Dr Chant’s movement as “Don’t drag me into this shitshow of yours” is wrong… https://t.co/PcL2sEit4H
— Taswege (@tasmccullagh) January 18, 2022
#MarkMcGowan talking Covid-sense! pic.twitter.com/lcaG4DDfRW
— 💧 Johny Miller (@jmil400) January 18, 2022
As of 8pm on Wednesday 19 January 2022 there were 19,791 new confirmed COVID -19 cases reported by NSW Health in the last 24hr period. - comprising 17, 647 positive PCR tests and est. 2,144 self-reported positive rapid antigen tests.
Given the level of COVID-19 case under reporting this represents due to the combined state & federal mismanagement of the public health response (including disease test, trace & contact measures), conservatively the real NSW daily new case number on 19 January is estimated in excess of 98,995 persons.
Currently there are 2,781 COVID-19 cases admitted to NSW hospitals, including 212 people in intensive care, 68 of whom require ventilation.
As at Monday 17 January 166,122 people in the state were managing their COVID-19 illness at home or in insecure accommodation.
In the 24hrs to 8pm on 17 January a total of 25 people died with a COVID-19 diagnoses - 16 men and 9 women – with 65% of those dead being between 70 years of age to over 100 years of age.
As of 19 January 2022 there were 278,324 active COVID-19 cases across New South Wales.
The positivity rate on those daily PCR tests is 24.08% - so far above the World Health Organisation benchmark for an epidemic virus within a controllable range (under 5%) that there is no reason to see these numbers signalling the beginning of the end of the pandemic in New South Wales or Australia generally. Indeed, by week ending 15 January 2022 all 15 NSW local health districts were recording positivity rates of more than 5 %.
According to a Northern NSW Health District (NNSWLHD) media release on 20 January 2022:
To 8pm 19 January, 1,051 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Northern NSW Local Health District, including 601 positive PCR tests and 450 positive rapid antigen tests (RATs).
By LGA:
Ballina 63 [968 active cases]
Byron 78 [1,384 active cases]
Clarence Valley 45 [458 active cases]
Kyogle 14 [89 active cases]
Lismore 48 [591 active cases]
Richmond Valley 61 [374 active cases]
Tenterfield 2 (Woodenbong & Urbenville post code that comes under Lismore PHU)
Tweed 290 [3,391 active cases]
NOTE: My annotations in red come from data recorded for 19 January 2022 on “Map of NSW PCR tests and cases reported from PCR tests”
There are 50 COVID-19 positive patients in hospital in Northern NSW, with 6 of these in ICU. (Tenterfield is in a different Local Health District, but postcodes put cases in NNSWLHD).
** Please note these RAT results may be from within the previous seven days, and there may be some cases included in these numbers where people have reported positive RATs on multiple days and/or where people have also had a positive PCR test during the same reporting period.
Quite frankly the NNSWLHD’s inability to accurately record and quantify the number of daily new COVID-19 cases in Northern NSW makes a mockery of any claim to have a genuine test, trace, contact & isolate/quarantine system in place. A failing they share with NSW Health and NSW Coalition Government. Therefore I am at a loss as to how I might accurately record the real number of daily new cases by postcode for the 7 local government areas within this health district.
SOURCES
The Conversation, 12 January 2022:
Australians are getting a stark reminder about how value is actually created in an economy, and how supply chains truly work.
Ask chief executives where value comes from and they will credit their own smart decisions that inflate shareholder wealth. Ask logistics experts how supply chains work and they will wax eloquent about ports, terminals and trucks. Politicians, meanwhile, highlight nebulous intangibles like “investor confidence” – enhanced, presumably, by their own steady hands on the tiller.
The reality of value-added production and supply is much more human than all of this. It is people who are the driving force behind production, distribution and supply.
Labour – human beings getting out of bed and going to work, using their brains and brawn to produce actual goods and services – is the only thing that adds value to the “free gifts” we harvest from nature. It’s the only thing that puts food on supermarket shelves, cares for sick people and teaches our children.
Even the technology used to enhance workers’ productivity – or sometimes even replace them – is ultimately the culmination of other human beings doing their jobs. The glorious complexity of the whole economy boils down to human beings, using raw materials extracted and tools built by other human beings, working to produce goods and services.
A narrow, distorted economic lens
The economy doesn’t work if people can’t work. So the first economic priority during a pandemic must be to keep people healthy enough to keep working, producing, delivering and buying.
That some political and business leaders have, from the outset of COVID-19, consistently downplayed the economic costs of mass illness, reflects a narrow, distorted economic lens. We’re now seeing the result – one of the worst public policy failures in Australia’s history.
The Omicron variant is tearing through Australia’s workforce, from health care and child care, to agriculture and manufacturing, to transportation and logistics, to emergency services.
The result is an unprecedented, and preventable, economic catastrophe. This catastrophe was visited upon us by leaders – NSW Premier Dom Perrotet and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in particular – on the grounds they were protecting the economy. Like a Mafia kingpin extorting money, this is the kind of “protection” that can kill you…...
Read full article here.
There is a question now hanging over Morrison & Frydenberg's 2022-23 Budget, geared as it is to fulfill the Coalition's yet to be revealed election promises rather than buttressing the nation against the adverse economic winds blowing through countless CBDs around the country.
An estimated 50 per cent of the national workforce are currently absent from their employment on any given day due to COVID-19 - either workers have contracted the virus, are home looking after a dependent family member/s who is ill with it, have become a "close contact" and are isolating because of it, or their place of employment has temporarily closed due to lack of customers who are afraid of catching it.
It's not just a question of how far household consumption is likely to fall as this situation continues through at least another six weeks.
Note: as an example, two previous Household Final Consumption Expenditure falls during the pandemic have been 12.2% June Qtr 2020 & 4.8% September Qtr 2021. Periods in which infection growth intensified.
Neither is it all about the financial pain being felt by small businesses after every Coalition public policy error compounds economic distress at community level, sweeping away hope and income.
It is also about how much will the inevitable loss of production and productivity carve off the value bottom line of states and territories' State Domestic Product (SDP) and what impact that has on Australia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the level of eyewatering public debt government has to service.
Does the Australian economy have the resilience to withstand a full year of SARS-CoV-2 running unchecked in the general population due to the Coalition's political policy of 'living with COVID'?
State of Play in Australia on Day 716 of the COVID-19 Scourge.
 |
| ANZ graph Week to January 2020 to Week to January 2022 via Laura Tingle, @latingle 7 January 2022 Consumer spending in Sydney, New South Wales is the lowest it has ever been over the entire course of the COVID-19 pandemic to date and, there is no prize for guessing that what caused this was Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's favourite three-word slogan, 'living with COVID'. Which he so disastrously urged fellow Liberal & NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet to put into high-gear action by further reducing key protective elements of the public health response in NSW while at the same time opening up the state, then doubling down on dismantling what remained in place after the Omicron Variant entered Sydney and began to spread. .
|
ABC News, 6 January 2022:
Escalating COVID-19 cases in New South Wales have not reduced appetite for travel, with tourist hotspots across the state still buzzing with activity.
However, many regional hospitality businesses are missing out on the potential windfall because staff shortages are preventing them from operating at full capacity…..
It's a similar scenario on the state's north coast.
Ballina RSL chief executive Bill Coulter said they had to reduce trading hours due to a lack of staff.
"It's challenging in terms of rostering. We're down about 20 per cent in staffing numbers and have been for quite some time now," Mr Coulter said.
"I think there is ongoing uncertainty about hospitality. When there's a COVID outbreak or issue, then it gets knocked out pretty quickly. And I think people's uncertainty in that space has heightened their anxiousness and they've sought alternative employment."
He said it was a problem across the region.
"We've had visitors in the club in the last week … and they say they just can't get into any business in town because nothing's open."….
Jane Laverty, regional manager of the NSW Business Chamber, said the latest surge in COVID cases had been a huge challenge for regional businesses.
"Our hospitality businesses … did see this as the time that they would be able to claw back some of the losses that they had previously, and they've been looking forward to this holiday period."
She called for government support to be reinstated for businesses across the state.
"We're certainly not back to any level of normal … we're still very much in the grips of COVID pain.
"That support will give the businesses and their employees some level of hope and support and dollars in their accounts during the period of time where we've still got such instability."
THEN
Excerpt from a Statement from Lynne Weir, Acting Chief Executive Northern NSW Local Health District, 23 September 2021:
In our District, there are currently sufficient Intensive Care beds across our three major hospitals in Grafton, Lismore and Tweed, with plans in place to surge staffing and intensive care capacity, if and when required, our networked hospital system ensures patients can be transferred or redirected to other hospitals where necessary, including private hospitals.
Throughout the early stages of the pandemic, we sourced additional equipment, including ventilators, and we regularly review our stocks and supply chains of resources, including PPE and pharmacy items, to ensure adequate supplies.
From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Northern NSW Local Health District has been actively increasing its staffing and upskilling its workforce in readiness to care for COVID-19 patients in our region.
Additional training programs were developed for nurses, midwives, and allied health staff, with more than 265 staff attending surge training in Intensive Care, Emergency and Immunisation specialties to provide additional capacity to care for patients.
Lismore Base Hospital is the primary receiving hospital for COVID-19 cases requiring hospitalisation in the District, having recently undergone significant redevelopment to provide a new Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit, as well as other general hospital wards. These refurbishments have also delivered more single room capacity across the facility. Our other major hospitals in the District also have trained staff and the necessary equipment to cater for COVID patients if required as the pandemic evolves.
Between mid-2012 and mid-2021, NNSWLHD increased its workforce by an additional 1,219 FTE staff - an increase of 32.3 per cent including 211 more doctors 461 more nurses and midwives and 141 more allied health staff.
Message received by a registered nurse in NSW on 13 December 2021:
 |
| via @vintage_nurse |
Northern NSW Local Health District, media release excerpt, 16 October 2021:
Visiting restrictions at hospitals across Northern NSW Local Health District are being eased slightly to allow visitors back into health facilities in a staged approach.
A patient may have one visitor once a day for one hour, between the hours of 1pm and 6pm.
Visitors must be at least 12 years of age, and must have be fully vaccinated with two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Visitors will need to carry evidence of their vaccination status on entry to the health facility, and must wear a surgical mask while on site.
Acting Chief Executive, Northern NSW Local Health District, Lynne Weir said people should continue to keep up to date with contact tracing alerts, and be vigilant against any symptoms of COVID-19 so they do not attend a health facility if they feel unwell.
“People must not visit if they have any COVID-19 symptoms, are a close contact of a confirmed case (or are within their isolation period), live in a household with a person who is currently isolating, or if they are waiting for a COVID-19 test result,” Ms Weir said.
“People also must not visit if they have been to case locations in NSW, interstate affected areas or New Zealand in the past 14 days.”
NOW
The Guardian, 7 January 2022:
One of New South Wales’ major regional hospitals had to source its own triage tent, is sending Covid tests six hours away due to a lack of space for its own diagnosis machine, and has had positive patients wait 30 hours to be transferred to a designated hospital for those with the virus.
Doctors at the Tweed hospital, which is 1km from the Queensland border in northern NSW and serves a hinterland that includes Byron Bay, are even donning personal protective equipment to drive home, in their own cars, asymptomatic Covid-positive patients because taxis won’t take them.
Kristin Ryan-Agnew, president of the local branch of the Nurses and Midwives Association and a senior nurse at the hospital, said local Covid cases were tripling daily, much faster than the 5o% growth in new cases reported for NSW as a whole on Wednesday.
As a result of increased presentations to Tweed’s emergency department, nurses were doing “double shifts every day” with one day off before resuming the toil. “They’re going to fall over in a screaming heap,” she said. “They will not be able to manage.”
Eighteen staff, many of them senior, have resigned since December out of a roster of about 150, citing burnout and the better conditions offered over the border.
Queensland offers $1,800 a year for nurses’ education, a Covid bonus – both absent in NSW – and higher wages, Ryan-Agnew said.
“They were really top-notch, really good quality staff, and they can walk up to the Gold Coast and they’ll just completely snaffle them.”
As Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday, nurses at Lismore Base hospital – the destination for Tweed’s Covid patients needing treatment – are also struggling to cope with a surge in medical needs.
The Tweed hospital is buckling under spiking demand for care and a lack of trained staff and appropriate equipment. A senior manager, for instance, had to phone around themselves and then purchase the triage tent prior to Christmas after months of pleading to the health department, Ryan-Agnew said.
The tent, though, remains far from adequate, with no toilet, forcing potentially Covid-positive patients – and anyone waiting for PCR testing to cross the border – to traipse through the main hospital lobby.
“You can have people with heart conditions, sick kids, elderly, frail, all sitting there waiting to be seen, and you’ve got a potential Covid patient walking through the waiting room,” Ryan-Agnew said.
Patients with chest and severe abdominal pain, septic children and adults should be in beds not a tent without nursing care, staff said. Earlier this week, one Covid patient had to wait 17 hours before being transferred to Lismore, while another patient had to wait 30 hours before being moved on Wednesday.
The nurse manager shares office space and air-conditioning with two beds set aside for Covid patients with no air-locked space for changing PPE.
“We have bottles of hand sanitiser sitting on top of overflowing bins, flapping Covid tent flaps compromising PPE,” another staff member, who requested anonymity, said.
“We also continue to struggle getting adequate PPE and supplies, certain masks run out, no hair coverings and no disposable blood pressure cuffs.”
 |
| The triage tent sourced by a senior manager at Tweed hospital. Photograph: Supplied |
Read the full story here.
The Guardian, 8 January 2022:
Staff at the hospital serving tourist mecca Byron Bay in northern New South Wales say the facility is under “extreme strain”, with Covid-positive patients left in bays behind curtains and one patient waiting 45 hours to be transported to the region’s designated Covid hospital.
As many as 100 people a day are arriving at the Byron Central hospital, stretching staff already depleted by Covid-forced absences. The Byron area had a double-vaccination rate of about 85% as of 20 December, one of the lowest in NSW.
Healthcare workers collecting information from the public at a Covid testing site in Sydney
The hospital’s single isolation room was taken up by one Covid patient for almost two days earlier this week before being transported. “We are constantly being crippled by a lack of transfer options” with ambulances often unavailable because of their own shortages, a senior staffer who requested anonymity said.
“We have a positive pressure room also that is being used as an isolation room and another room which we can close an actual door on,” the hospital worker said. “These are often all taken up, so we have Covid-positive patients in bays behind curtains because we can’t get people to where they need to be in a timely manner.”
As reported this week by Guardian Australia, northern NSW hospitals are under increasing strain at the designated Covid hospital at Lismore and at the bigger Tweed hospital near the border with Queensland.
Byron’s challenges are made worse by the loss of medical staff who have refused the government’s Covid vaccination mandate, and its proximity to communities with relatively large anti-vaccination support.
The region also has a relatively high number of cases per 1,000 people, with another 1,154 Covid cases in northern NSW in the latest 24-hour reporting period.
Northern NSW Local Health District website:
Hospital Visitors: Changes and Restrictions
Visitor restrictions are in place to protect patients, staff and visitors at our hospitals and health facilities.
Visitors are now restricted at all hospitals and health facilities in Northern NSW.
Exemptions will be considered on a case by case basis for compassionate or extenuating circumstances, for example in the case of palliative care.
Women accessing birthing services can continue to nominate one support person (participant in care) during her labour, birth and post-birth.
For outpatient appointments and community services, telehealth appointments are being utilised where possible.
All patients and visitors are required to wear a mask when entering a health facility.
As a precautionary measure ALL visitors will be screened on entry and will be required to check in using the QR code and provide evidence of their COVID-19 vaccination.
You will also be asked:
Do you have any COVID-19 symptoms?
Have you been identified as a close contact of a COVID-19 case in the past 14 days?
Have you returned from overseas in the past 14 days?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, you will not be permitted to enter the facility.
The text of an email being sent by the Woolworths Group on Friday, 7 January 2022:
Dear [redacted],
On behalf of the whole team at Woolworths, I’d like to wish you a very Happy New Year and hope that you were able to enjoy the festive period.
As we welcome in 2022, it’s clear that we are entering a very different phase of COVID, not least because of the high levels of community transmission associated with Omicron.
When you’re shopping with us at the moment, you might unfortunately have noticed gaps on shelf, or substitutions in your online order. Unlike the surge buying of early 2020 (who could forget the toilet paper), this is because of the number of people in our supply chain in isolation – from suppliers to truck drivers and distribution centre team members – which in turn is causing material delays to store deliveries. To give you a sense of the magnitude of the challenge, we are experiencing COVID-driven absences of 20%+ in our distribution centres and 10%+ in our stores. [my yellow highlighting]
NSW is currently the most affected, although we are seeing impacts across the whole country, and it’s not yet clear how soon the system will come back into balance as we move through the Omicron wave.
We understand how frustrating it is when you can’t find the product you’re looking for and, together with our suppliers and supply chain partners, we’re working hard to get all products back on shelf as quickly as we can (including Rapid Antigen Tests).
In the meantime, we have more than enough stock in the system and plenty more coming. We also have good supply within each ‘category’ of product (even if your favourite isn’t available, a good alternative hopefully should be), so it really helps if you can be flexible with the choices you make. We would of course also ask you to keep shopping as you normally would and to continue to show kindness to our teams.
If you’re shopping online, as a temporary measure we are automatically activating substitutions on all orders. We know this isn’t ideal, but it does mean there’s less chance of missing out on something you really need. We’ll revert to your preference as soon as possible.
As we transition to living with COVID in 2022, we’ll need to keep learning and adapting. We’ll communicate any changes to our settings as they arise so that we can keep providing the safest possible way for you to enjoy everything you’d expect from Today’s Fresh Food People.
Thank you again for your support and understanding as we go over the Omicron hump.
Brad Banducci
CEO Woolworths Group
"Dr Nick Talley: Protect yourself from Omicron, because the PM's plan won't" [Inverell Times, 3 January 2022]
Perrottet attempting to pretend all is going to plan......
The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 2022:
The NSW government is preparing to announce a major reversal of COVID-19 restrictions by shutting nightclubs, banning singing and dancing in pubs, and pausing major events and some elective surgery in response to the state’s surging Omicron caseload.
The changes were expected to be finalised on Friday after NSW recorded 70,000 coronavirus cases in two days and a significant increase in the number of hospitalised patients, government sources not authorised to speak publicly said on Thursday night.
Venues would also be discouraged from allowing “vertical consumption”, or standing up while drinking at bars, under the proposed changes, the sources said.
Major events would be risk-assessed by NSW Health and postponed where necessary. Restrictions will be branded as “minor” safety measures that will allow the state to “continue to live with COVID and manage the pandemic in a measured and considered way”.
The measures are to be signed off by the government’s COVID economic recovery committee on Friday morning. The decisions were made following a meeting of the committee on Thursday morning…..
Meanwhile, elective surgery restrictions are also expected to be re-introduced on Friday, after the Premier flagged the state government was “looking at” limiting procedures as well as mobilising private hospitals to deal with what health authorities have said will likely be a rapid, but short, case surge.
The Premier’s office was contacted for comment but did not reply before deadline.
