Families furious about unvaccinated SummitCare nursing home staff after two more Covid cases
The daughter of a Sydney aged care resident who tested positive to Covid-19 says she is furious the workforce at the Baulkham Hills nursing home had not been vaccinated, and if she had known she would have taken over her parents’ care herself.
Kathie Melocco’s 88-year-old father tested positive to Covid-19 on Saturday, along with two other residents. Two more residents tested positive on Monday, both women aged in their 70s, bringing the total to five.
One of those women had been fully vaccinated while the other, who entered the facility in May, had not.
That follows two nurses at the centre, at least one of whom had reportedly not been vaccinated, testing positive late last week.
Melocco told the ABC’s Radio National on Monday that she was “very annoyed” to learn that many staff at the centre had not been vaccinated, saying failure to do so was dangerous.
Her father and her mother, who is 87, were vaccinated with Pfizer in April. Aged care provider SummitCare said 96% of its residents had been vaccinated, but only one-third of staff.
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That is about the national average for aged care staff, despite workers being included in the 1a cohort and eligible to receive the vaccine since April. National cabinet last week agreed to a mandatory requirement for all aged care workers to receive at least the first dose of a vaccine by 1 September.
“I am so annoyed that we weren’t told as a family that healthcare workers were not vaccinated,” Melocco said. “[My parents] were vaccinated way back in April. One would reasonably assume that healthcare workers were vaccinated around that time, and it didn’t happen.
“I’m fully vaccinated. As a family member I would have gone in and showered my parents myself. You don’t have up-close and personal showering and toileting people when you’re not vaccinated. It’s danger looming.”
Asked at a press conference on Monday whether staff had not all been vaccinated because it was not mandatory until recently, SummitCare chief operating officer Michelle Sloane said that was probably “one aspect” of the reason.
“But the second aspect is it is a new vaccine and like everybody in the community there was apprehension about having it. I think that’s probably the main reason.”
She went on to say there were still unvaccinated staff working in the home, but that she was confident the infection control measures were sufficient.
“If we said to all of our unvaccinated staff, don’t come to work, then there’d be no one to care,” she said.
“That is not just us but every aged care business across Australia and every hospital across Australia ... We take the right precautions with the right masks and the right protective gear, those residents are as safe as our staff are safe.”
Sloane also said the unvaccinated resident who had contracted Covid had been transferred to the facility after the federal government vaccination program had been completed in the home.
“We had been arranging for any remaining residents to receive vaccination and that has come about in between times,” she said.
Melocco said she had not asked about the vaccination rates of staff prior to hearing, at the premier’s daily press conference on Friday, that an unvaccinated staff member at Summit Hills had tested positive.
She also said she was “very angry” to learn of the case via a public press conference, and not through correspondence from the home.
“We were told after Newmarch House that things were going to be sorted out,” she said. “I just assumed that those people delivering healthcare advice had this handled.
“I mean that’s what I’m so annoyed about … I think we’ve got a right to be told as a family that people were not vaccinated. Then we could have made other choices and other decisions.”
Nineteen residents died in the Newmarch House aged care home outbreak in April to June 2020, the deadliest early outbreak of the pandemic.
Melocco’s parents were both moved to Westmead hospital over the weekend, along with other residents who have tested positive at the home. The rest of the facility is in lockdown.
She said she insisted on both her parents being taken to hospital, even though her mother has not tested positive. They have been together for almost 75 years, she said.
“If this is [the] end of life for my parents, given how long they’ve been together and they share a room, their beds are pushed together, I’m not having them say goodbye by mobile phones or iPads,” she said. “It’s not on. I want them to be together.”
She disputed SummitCare’s report that all residents who had tested positive to Covid were in “good spirits” but said her father wasn’t showing any obvious symptoms at this stage.
“My father has very, very serious underlying health conditions which require treatment three days a week, he’s actually on dialysis,” she said. “So it’s far too early to tell whether Covid has done
its deed.”
He attended a private dialysis clinic on Wednesday last week. Melocco said she was not sure if he would have been infectious at that point.