Lynette McKell’s mother cries down the phone when she tells her she can no longer afford the rapid tests she needs to visit her in aged care.
The near-daily visits have been a great joy for her and her mother, relieving the isolation that has been so prevalent in aged care throughout the pandemic.
But McKell’s family is struggling on a single, limited income, and the exorbitant cost of large volumes of rapid tests is proving too much.
She is now forced to space out the visits to stop the spiralling costs from chewing through the limited disposable income she has each week.
“We fall through the cracks. We’re not entitled to a healthcare card, so what are we supposed to do?” she said.
“She cries on the phone on a regular basis … I say, ‘mum, I’m trying to take a few days between visits so I can make [the rapid tests] go a bit further.’”
McKell’s story illuminates one side-effect of the government’s failure to secure adequate and reliable rapid antigen test supplies for the aged care sector.
Prior to Christmas, the commonwealth promised it would provide enough stock to allow providers to give them to essential visitors for free.
But the shortages mean aged care providers like St Basil’s Homes in South Australia, which cares for McKell’s mother, have been forced to prioritise their rapid test stocks for residents and workers, rather than visitors, who are being told to either find their own or purchase them from the provider at cost price.
While supplies have improved in the past week, the sector is still in the dark about when shipments will arrive and at what volume.
“We have still not received clarity from the [health department] regarding the ongoing supply of RATs post being in an outbreak position,” St Basil’s chief executive, Michelle Church, said.
“The advice received today suggests that the supply has now stabilised and that the intent to supply free RATs to aged care providers … has not changed.
“But we are still in the dark about when this will occur.”
The aged care sector has been calling on the government to set up a national coordination centre to ensure consistent supplies of PPE and rapid tests, along with surge workforce planning.
In a statement this week, the Australian Aged Care Collaboration group said it was continuing to press the government for “reliable supplies and more efficient distribution of RATs and PPE”.
A spokesperson for the aged care minister, Richard Colbeck, said the government has made more than 2.5m rapid tests available to aged care facilities last week alone for use by residents, staff, and visitors, bringing total supply of the devices to 10.7m.
National cabinet was due to discuss visitation when it met on Thursday, focusing on developing nationally consistent guidelines to ensure proper visitation rights.
Councils on the Ageing chief executive, Ian Yates, said some jurisdictions were providing visitation guidance that was causing “inhumane” periods of isolation for aged care residents.
“We’re not just dealing with reluctance in providers [to visitation], we’re dealing with inconsistent and wrong advice from state health units,” he told Guardian Australia.
“When there’s an outbreak, a resident or a couple of staff in a home, there has been persistent advice from some health units, which is not consistent, that you must lock up, and you must lock residents in their rooms.
“There have been residents locked up in rooms for weeks and weeks. That is inhumane and also not necessary.”
Colbeck’s office said reports of senior Australians being denied visitors and locked in their rooms were “unacceptable”.
The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) has been developing nationally consistent guidelines to ensure residents can receive essential visitors at all times, including during an outbreak.
“It will be important for the states and territories which set the public health orders in this regard to now align with this advice,” the spokesperson said.
“While the AHPPC acknowledges reopening visitation may increase the risk of Covid-19 cases in facilities, it says decisions to limit visitation must be proportionate and take into account the impacts of social isolation on resident health and wellbeing.”
Yates said providers were locking down entire facilities, rather than dividing residents into cohorts of positive and negative cases, which allowed greater freedom.
“This advice is being issued by health units that have no idea how you operate residential aged care … and part of it is that we think that the states ought to get out of that stuff, and just let the commonwealth work out what advice it is giving to providers.”
