More than 200 extra military medical personnel will be deployed to aged care homes in coming weeks, Defence Minister Richard Marles has announced.
The move came after aged care providers and trade unions requested Defence force support for the sector be extended beyond the August 12 end date.
Currently there are 24 ADF personnel providing supporting staff in Australian aged care homes but in the coming weeks that number will be extended to 220.
The sector is currently experiencing COVID-19 infection rates similar to the February peak. In the nation’s aged care home there are 6,000 residents and close to 3,500 staff who have contracted the virus.
The ADF medics will be deployed to late September, after a meeting between federal health and defence officials overnight.
The coronavirus crisis in the sector is so bad that Federal Aged Care Minister Annika Wells, who is also the sports minister, has decided she cannot attend the Commonwealth Games in England.
“It’s a decision I haven’t taken couldn’t leave the country with lightly,” she told 9News
“In all conscience I couldn’t leave the country with aged-care facing the current winter wave.”
It means no federal minister will be representing Australia at the Games which start on Thursday in Birmingham. But the chair of the Australia Sports Commission, Kieran Perkins, will be there.
The announcement of further ADF support comes as a coronial inquest into the Newmarch House aged care COVID-19 outbreak in Sydney where 19 people died begins today.
Meanwhile, Nine Newspapers are reporting some intensive care unit (ICU) patients in Victoria are being sent home instead of being kept in general wards because of the strain on the state’s health system.
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While highly unusual, this has occurred in recent weeks at the the Footscray and Sunshine hospitals, health authorities said.
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