The Andrews government is continuing to take fire over its COVID-19 hotel quarantine bungle, with a war erupting yesterday over the largely irrelevant question of whether or not Victoria rejected defence force assistance.
The problem with this judicial inquiry and yesterday’s parliamentary inquiry is that they’re focused on completely the wrong failure.
Whether or not Victoria’s increasingly deadly second wave was caused by poorly trained and woefully paid security guards isn’t the point. It’s the political equivalent of burying the lead.
What seems to have been forgotten in the rush to demonise Andrews is that the federal government had not mandated hotel quarantine at all — in fact the week before Victoria forced the quarantine issue, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was still allowing indoor gatherings of 100 people.
Like the UK, returning travellers from global hotspots were allowed to freely isolate at home and spread the virus among the community — as many wealthy Aspen skiers did.
The quarantine program was an excellent idea pushed by Andrews that was unfortunately poorly executed by a stressed and ultimately incompetent area of Victoria’s public service.
But Victoria was hardly alone using security guards. Not only did other states use similar security guards, they are still doing so. Remarkably, yesterday a Western Australian guard entered a quarantining couple’s hotel room looking for TV remote control.
The unforgivable error in the Victorian response was not the hotel quarantine, but the utter failure to prepare for a second wave.
From late March when we became aware of COVID-19’s high reproduction rate, the playbook in dealing with an outbreak was shown by countries like Taiwan and Singapore who had experience dealing with SARS.
High levels of testing and tracing and targeted lockdowns are essential to avoid shutting down an entire economy (which itself has significant human costs).
Victoria had three full months to get testing and tracing infrastructure set up. That is the ability to tests hundreds of thousands of people each day and get results back in 24 hours. In the midst of a pandemic, three months is like a lifetime.
The requirement for rapid and widespread testing is even more critical because the virus doesn’t present symptoms in more than half the carriers. When an outbreak occurs, there are thousands of unwitting spreaders. Unless people are tested quickly and results rapidly returned, the virus will inevitably spread.
Critically, testing needs to be done across the entire at-risk population, not merely the minority of people who are symptomatic. This column was warning of the danger of not testing asymptomatic cases as far back as early April.
The highly asymptomatic nature of COVID-19 may explain why Victorian healthcare workers and those in aged care are showing such an elevated positive infection rate.
It is difficult to find a precise number but there are about 100,000 healthcare workers in Victoria, and about 1100 active healthcare COVID-19 cases (so about 1% of the workforce). This is compared with the entire population in Victoria where 0.12% are active carriers.
While health workers are obviously far more exposed to the virus, most aren’t on the front line. The heightened infection rate can be explained by Victoria testing all health workers rather than just those showing symptoms.
To show how slow Victoria was to respond, we created a basic comparison of Victoria’s test numbers v positive cases:
Victoria’s positive cases started rapidly accelerating in on June 17 when 21 cases were recorded. By June 27 that rose to 40; by July 4 it hit 101. However, look at the actual test numbers during that critical outbreak period:
| Mon 15 Jun | 4012 | |
| Tue 16 Jun | 5030 | |
| Wed 17 Jun | 8931 | |
| Thu 18 Jun | 12400 | |
| Fri 19 Jun | 14671 | |
| Sat 20 Jun | 9504 | |
| Sun 21 Jun | 15400 | |
| Mon 22 Jun | 6314 | |
| Tue 23 Jun | 8149 | |
| Wed 24 Jun | 20999 |
Alarm bells should have been ringing very loudly on 15 June when cases increased to 12 (having dropped to zero a week earlier). As a comparison, Auckland was locked down today after a single family tested positive. Yet instead of urgently ramping up testing and ensuring tracing, Victoria was in the midst of a different issue.
On June 16 Labor cabinet minister Marlene Kairouz resigned following a branch-stacking controversy, while Andrews had spent the best part of a month dealing with factional politics. Meanwhile the virus was quietly escaping from hotel quarantine.
Even as cases drastically increased in late June, testing was slow to respond. On June 22 and 23, when it should have been testing 100,000-plus people a day, Victoria was barely testing anyone. Even now, with the state crippled by stage four restrictions, the Department of Health and Human Services website is still advising Victorians that they do not require a test even if they are a close contact of someone who has recently tested positive.
The stage four lockdown is a result of the Victorian government’s inability to properly manage the outbreak. The only option left to eliminate the spread (if that remains the goal) was to essentially destroy the economy at a cost of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of people’s livelihoods.
Forget hotel quarantine — that was an excellent idea poorly executed. There was no excuse for the Andrews government and DHHS not creating adequate testing and tracing infrastructure, despite having three months to prepare.
The inquiry is looking at the wrong stuff-up.
So should have NSW shut totaly down a month ago?
No, because NSW was doing contact tracing and vigorous testing. This is the point that Adam Schwab is making – the extremely damaging shutdown in Victoria only became necessary because the first (and less damaging) lines of defence were neglected. Fortunately, this has not been the case in other States which have so far been able to do the job of containing the virus. These States will still suffer from the indirect impacts of Victorian Government mistakes, but not as badly as if they had made the same mistakes too.
But if they did look deeper they (media and Victorian Coalition Opposition) would be looking at failures on the federal/Scotty From Marketing’s side too? …. And they wouldn’t want that would they?
Adam is on strong ground here, but doesn’t seem to pick up that the Feds (blame Scomo if you’re going to blame Andrews) didn’t show any preparedness in the aged care sector. 4 months after the beginning of the pandemic in Australia, really 6, and the Feds were not on iota further prepared in the aged care sector.
The smart man or woman asks, what mistakes are we making now? Nobody is doing that in government today.
“The stage four lockdown is a result of the Victorian government’s inability to properly manage the outbreak.”
Really?
While it’s clear the VIC GOV *did* stuff up by failing to be better prepared for COVID-19 round 2, they’re not the only ones responsible for where VIS is now.
Try a for-profit aged care sector that was woefully underprepared for the task. Of course, they’re madly trying to lay the blame for that at anybody else’s door. But if one private (but NFP) provider – Bolton Clarke Aged Care – could look at what was happening elsewhere in the word and come up with a plan to adeqautely prepare for it, then they all should have been up to that task.
Employing surge capacity, identifying risks (like staff using public transport to get to and from work) and addressing that. Proper training on the use of PPE. Arranging shifts to minimise cross contacts between staff. It’s not rocket science.
Add to that a regulator which seemed to think it was a good idea to ask providers to self-assess their readiness. Didn’t they remember there was a Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety going on? Because the system was broken? I mean, seriously? (Also, apparently Bolton-Clarke shared its COVID readiness plan with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. What did they do with it?)
Add to that the failure at all levels of GOV – but especially the AUS GOV – to understand just how many of their citizens are employed in insecure jobs with no benefits, and design a safety net that would protect frontline workers. Including the hard working and grossly underpaid workers who manage to keep the for-profit aged care sector limping along.
Add to that the incredible pressure being put on the VIC GOVE by the AUS GOV and certain business lobbiest – looking at you AI Group – which, aided and abetted by sections of the for-profit media, railed against suggestions of reintroduction of restrictions (and still are).
Then add to that those ‘soverign citizens’ and others from the fringe of lunatic conspracy theories who, thanks to a culture of distrust in experts created by those same sections of the for-profit media (among others), see it as their duty to work against the rest of society and flaut the public health order rules.
Yes, Jacinda was able to reintroduce Stage 3 lockdowns in Auckland, in just 24 hours, when just four memebers of one family tested positive. But that’s because NZ has pursued a coherent eliminatipn policy from the start and they really are all in it together.
I can just imagine the screams of over reach if the VIC GOV had done that.
So, by all means Adam, point out where the failures happened because I’m sure the people of VIC – and many more – want to understand what went wrong and why. But let’s not look for a single scape goat. Why not look at presenting a more nuanced picture?
I think NZ also has a more civil society than Australia. And no Murdoch media
Neatly covered Cate R, much better than me.
Great article Adam.
A refreshingly balanced assessment of the situation which both critiques and applauds where appropriate.
Your acknowledgement that perfection in planning and execution in times of crisis such as these should not be the pass/fail mark is welcomed.
Further, your point that the vic government shouldn’t get a free pass from scrutiny surrounding their preparation and planning for a second wave is entirely appropriate.
Although I myself would have contextualised that by noting that governments (of all sizes and persuasions) across the globe have had their pants pulled down by this virus, to the extent that by comparision the vic government have simply performed no better or worse than average.
Newsflash- australian/victorian exceptionalism does not exist, our governments and their departments are full of ordinary human beings, like those found all over the Earth.
Further, for all we know NSW could right now be sleepwalking into calamity in the very same way victoria was a month or two ago….
We could well be viewing the victorian response in a different light if/when luck runs out in other jurisdictions in the coming months.
Perhaps it’s not a bad thing that this inquiry is focused on the specific issue of hotel quarantine?
If it WERE based on the broader 2nd wave preparation as per your wish, perhaps that enquiry if held today would be missing some key contextual information that hasn’t appeared yet.
There is something to be said for waiting for the dust to settle before reviewing something and making major decisions and declaring what is/isn’t acceptable.
Everybody is thirsty for answers in this uncertain environment, however often the worst thing you can do is give an answer to a half formed question.
A little bit of knowledge can be more dangerous than none.
Best explanation of the primary issues leading to loss of control of the second wave. This issue was well recognized prior to the 2nd wave in medical/epidemiologist literature (https://t.co/B1caYih47x) but did not achieve sufficient importance ahead of political issues as noted by Adam Schwab. This unfortunately remains a huge weakness in the response to COVID in Victoria