MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th August, 2020) An Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety inquiry has heard on Monday that the country's public health officials and care homes had no response plan in place to protect residents and curb the spread of COVID-19.
A hearing has begun in the city of Sydney to assess how the country's care homes dealt with the coronavirus disease pandemic. During his opening remarks, senior counsel Peter Rozen accused the aged care sector and public health officials of not having a response plan to deal with the epidemiological crisis.
"The regulator did not have an appropriate aged care sector Covid-19 response plan. Given that it was widely understood that recipients of aged care services were a high-risk group, this seems surprising. The evidence will reveal that neither the commonwealth department of health nor the aged care regulator developed a Covid-19 plan specifically for the aged care sector," Rozen was quoted by The Guardian newspaper as saying.
The inquiry also heard that 68 percent of Australia's COVID-19 deaths have taken place in the country's care homes, as reported by the newspaper.
Earlier in the day, an Australian lawmaker revealed that it had taken four days for the country's aged care regulator to report an outbreak of the coronavirus disease at a care home in Melbourne. At least 20 deaths have been associated with the outbreak at the facility, the newspaper stated.
On Monday, Australian health officials registered 337 new positive tests for COVID-19, taking the country's case total to 21,397. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd also announced that 19 people had died as a result of the disease over the past 24 hours, the highest number of deaths in a single day since the start of the outbreak.
