There are tentative signs that Victoria’s disastrous COVID-19 failure may be running its course as infections appear to plateau, but the political failure in the state rages unchecked.
It’s fair to say that almost every aspect of Victoria’s fiasco can be sheeted home to the Victorian state government and health authorities. Not that you’d know that if you listened to Premier Daniel Andrews. Andrews has blamed nearly everyone imaginable for the disaster – except himself and his government. Andrews is refusing to sack Jobs Minister Martin Pakula, whose department oversaw the hotel quarantine process.
At the same time, Andrews and his health minister, Jenny Mikakos, hide behind the smokescreen of a judicial inquiry (which will not report until September – assuming that Andrews doesn’t use the pandemic as an excuse to delay its findings even longer), despite the presiding judge stating that it is perfectly acceptable for those concerned to continue to make public statements in the interim.
But perhaps the most diabolical of Andrews’s phoney excuses has been to blame Melbourne’s citizens for supposedly “breaking the rules” – when, it now appears, many were in fact following his own bureaucracy’s bungled instructions.
Some Victorians awaiting COVID-19 test results have continued to mingle in the community because of health directives that only people with symptoms should remain in isolation — a move a leading epidemiologist worries might have contributed to the massive spread of the virus.
In one case, a Melbourne employee was still at work when his positive test result came through in mid-July because he had provided his employer with a letter from Monash Health, the state’s largest public health service. That letter advised that pending receipt of his test result, “if you do not have symptoms you can continue normal activities, unless you are a close contact of a known case”.
The man had no symptoms of coronavirus and was taking the precautionary step of being tested on Monday July 13 because he was acquainted with a parent suspected of having contracted the virus. He was not a close contact.
While that parent later tested negative, after his test the asymptomatic man continued to work on site for a small Melbourne manufacturing firm, which is still operating during the city’s stage-four lockdown to fulfil government contracts[…]
The owner of the factory was surprised at the advice but reassured when the initial case proved negative: “We thought OK, that sounds reasonable. The person he decided to have a test for is negative and it (the letter) says go back (to work) if you’re asymptomatic. And two days later, he was declared positive.”
Just two weeks ago, Andrews was casting blame from on high on those Victorians he said were not isolating “between when they had their test taken and when they got the results of that test”.
Even now, the Victorian bureaucracy still hasn’t got its advice sorted out.
Official information on the state’s health website continues to offer conflicting advice for those being tested for the virus. A page about receiving test results says: “After you’ve been tested, you need to go straight home and wait for your results.” Another page only directs symptomatic people to return home immediately[…]
National guidelines for public health units dealing with COVID-19 say anyone with symptoms “who is tested should stay home until a negative test is returned or symptoms have resolved, whichever is longer”.
NSW requires everyone to go home, regardless of symptoms.
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