There’s no record of vaccinated aged care workers
By Andrew Wicks
Today we discovered that no-one knows how many aged care workers have been vaccinated.
It seems that we do not know how many aged care workers had been vaccinated, as there seems to be no-one keeping track of who has received the vaccine, and who hasn’t. According to the Department of Health, work is now “underway” to survey aged care workers at the nation’s facilities (read: literally counting heads).
The question, of course, is who is responsible for this monumental cock up. According to Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck, it’s not him. Fronting a senate committee this morning, Colbeck was asked by Senator Katy Gallagher whether he thought he was responsible, yes or no. Colbeck proclaimed that it wasn’t “a yes or no answer.”
Elsewhere, Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian said she did not know how many aged care workers in NSW has been vaccinated against COVID-19, as such information would be kept by the federal government.
Fronting the media this morning, Simon Birmingham told ABC News Breakfast; “I do accept that it has not gone as we would have hoped.”
However, Birmingham was quick to shift blame, stating that the rollout was primarily hampered by the availability of vaccines.
Simon Birmingham has admitted the federal government’s vaccine rollout has not gone as the Commonwealth had hoped, but says the rollout continues to be hampered by international availability of vaccines. The took it further, claiming that the reason why 600 aged care facilities haven’t been vaccinated was primarily down the 12 weeks period between jabs with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Yet, prior to the rollout, residents and workers in aged and disability care were told that they’d receive the vaccine within the first six weeks.
As journalist Christopher Knaus noted:
“… a key area of responsibility for the federal government is vaccinating aged care staff and residents who are both in the highest priority group for vaccinations – phase 1a. Initially, the government said it had planned to complete phase 1a within roughly six weeks of the program’s commencement on 22 February. That included vaccinating 190,000 aged and disability care residents and 318,000 aged care and disability staff.”
With a week to go until that deadline, the government explained that they’d vaccinated 99,000 residents, but failed to explain how many staff received the jab.
“We know we aren’t where we want to be but we don’t know where we are,” Gerard Hayes, secretary of the Health Services Union in NSW, said of record-keeping in the sector’s “haphazard” rollout.
In early April, Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the program was “accelerating as intended” and “We were conservative in our estimates.”
Hunt also mentioned that; “… we remain on track to complete first doses for all Australians who seek it by the end of October.”
As The Big Smoke reported:
“Pre-rollout, Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested the rollout capacity will start at around 80,000 doses per week and increase from there. That’s 16,000 a day (over five-day weeks), well short of the required 200,000 a day. The planned peak capacity hasn’t been announced, but even back-of-the-beer-mat calculation would suggest a minimum of 167,000 vaccines per day to give two doses each to 20 million Australians in the eight months between March and October 2021. The longer it takes to reach such capacity, the higher that daily number will get – or we will not reach the target vaccination percentage this year.”
In conversation with The Guardian, The Council on the Ageing chief executive, Ian Yates, claimed that the government overpromised, and now, clearly underdelivered the vaccine. Yates also highlighted the lack of a plan for vaccinating aged care workers a month into the rollout.
“My sense is that, by and large, although there are patches, the vaccination of residents is now proceeding. But there’s no clarity around the timetable and process for the vaccination of aged care workers, and that is of concern… vaccination of the staff is really important to the Covid security of residents, and we are concerned that the vaccination of staff doesn’t seem to have a clear strategy at this point,” Yates said.
As The Age noted:
“… unions representing aged care workers in Australia believe fewer than 15 per cent of the national workforce could be vaccinated. Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the survey proposal highlighted ‘how poorly planned this rollout is’, adding that requiring aged care workers to find their own vaccinations rather than providing them at their workplace could be acting as a deterrent.”
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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11 comments
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Marilyn Shepherd -
Max Gross -
GL -
Michael Taylor -
Ken -
Terence Mills -
Phil Pryor -
Terence Mills -
DrakeN -
totaram -
Jon Chesterson
Return to home pageThey are not vaccines, they are illegal gene therapies that are killing people all over the world, why is it that no Australian media can be bothered with that simple fact. The FDA states there is no evidence they stop any virus. But then Australia is the only nation still so lazy and ignorant they won’t report that there has been no pandemic of anything because all the called tests are fakes made without any virus to test for.
Just stop this nonsense, no one in the world needs these jabs, and peddling for big pharma and their profits is ludicrous.
Promise anything, guarantee nothing!!!
Marilyn, provide credible evidence to back up your absurd fantasy bullshit or get lost.
Marilyn, where oh where did you get that nonsense from?
I agree with some of what Maryilan says.
“What they are being asked to inject is not a vaccine as defined by the CDC as “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease.” [5] Rather, it is an experimental and novel technology. By definition of the FDA [6] as a component used as treatment to affect a body’s function, it is in fact a medical device, a physical device that comes in a molecular sized package.” https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/294852
In case you haven’t heard, there is a team of some 1000 lawyers out to sue WHO for ‘misleading world over COVID-19 outbreak’. “Consumer protection trial lawyer Reiner Fuellmich says agencies ‘knowingly misled governments across the world.” He also “plans on filing a class-action suit in the United States.” https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/297626
PCR test creator Kary Mullis and Dr Anthony Fauci were poles apart in understanding how the PCR test worked. Who do you think might have a better understanding?
Marilyn
You seem to be getting your information from SKY, specifically Alan Jones.
This is dangerous for your health !
M Shepherd, an impossibly loud but backward voice in an age of Sky and Murdoch type contrived ignorance, to profit from others. Science, madam, is unknown to you and your type.
Michael
My login is back
Thank you
Marilyn Shepherd is partially correct, I believe, in as much as the currently available vaccines do not actually stop infection by the virus, but restrict its replication – and thus limit illness – in the human body.
The rest of her diatribe is evidentially fallacious.
DrakeN. Please put the blame on exactly where it lies: the nature of science. Marilyn Shepherd is “correct” because no one involved in science can be 100% correct about anything. If a statement is very scientifically specific, then it can be falsified by a single counter-example, but it can never be “proved or verified”. This allows Ms Shepherd and her ilk to spread FUD, ” fear uncertainty and doubt”, amongst the poor, ignorant and gullible, and thereby bamboozle them into voting for the usual oligarchs who will “save them” from evil. It has been so from time immemorial, and will continue to be so, especially as we restrict education to the wealthy and ensure that the poorer are kept ignorant.
Read the mumbo-jumbo posted by “Ken” just to realise the truth of what I am posting. Do you understand what he has posted? Only he and the links he has posted know. Everyone else is on their own. Vaccines? Pfft. No such thing. Did we get rid of smallpox? What smallpox? Never heard of it! Polio? Complete fabrication. Never existed. Even if it did, it would have disappeared on its own like the “Spanish Flu”. No vaccines were used in that case, were they? Etc. Viruses? They don’t exist! Neither do bacteria! Diseases are caused by an imbalance in the five basic humours in the body. A little bleeding (Phlebotomy) at the right time will fix all problems.
Need I go on? It is all based on ignorance and the likes of Marilyn and Ken will fix all that for you. Just read the links provided. No need to study “science” and all that bullshit. Why, Michael Taylor himself told us that looking at the ants in his garden is much better for predicting the weather than the BOM with all those clever guys with their computers. And that is why Tony Abbott fired all those “climate scientists” in the CSIRO and brought in the guy, as head, who knew that “water divining” was the way to reap the benefits of research. Is he still around? And Malcolm Turnbull, that “inventor of the internet in Australia”, soon fixed up the NBN for us at lower cost and higher performance, than the “gold plated” one designed by Labor. As anyone can now certify.
Carry on chaps! All going very well! If we trash the Universities a little more, soon there will be no more silly people believing in all this rubbish about viruses and vaccines and we will all be saved! Halleluiah!! Just a little speaking in tongues and you will be fine!
Commander in Chief of the Corporatised Clueless Commonwealth Clan –
It would have been fundamentally so simple and economical using existing public health services supplemented by contracting additional nurses and doctors under an expanded Medicare program to have vaccinated this relatively small population of critical front line staff. But no, Liberals want money in their corporate shareholder’s pockets, private businesses, shrink the public health sector further, donations and commitments to fly back in their pockets for election time.
It helps not to keep track of who has been vaccinated, so poor performance and rollout can’t be verified and reported, the government’s decision to use private companies questioned or those companies held accountable. Let’s not have too many requirements no matter how basic and essential they are to how a Public Service would be and has in the past been held accountable and criticised by Liberal Governments
Why spend $100 million on the public health system and Medicare to deliver when you can spend a couple of billion on a small number of elite privately owned hitherto unknown companies who have no fucking idea or experience in doing the job? Work up the public debt, and claim the Liberals are the only ones in future government who can manage the economy and pay back the debt through austerity measures and lies – What they do best!
Of course, you can police who gets which vaccine, so people over 50 don’t get Pfizer without attracting attention from the media. You can do it slowly so it doesn’t expose the inefficiencies and inadequacies of vaccine procurement and supply. You can by-pass GPs so the question of medical/civil rights and vaccine choice don’t get amplified. You can minimise the public health system so they don’t get the credit and private health and insurers boost their own privileged investments and portfolios, profiting out of illness and disability. You can procure invisible funding for your next election campaign and tell more lies about how fucking good you are at governing the country!
More legitimised government corruption and privatisation squeezing the juice out of what’s left of the public system and the crown jewels, public health services and Medicare. We couldn’t tolerate the success of the NHS (UK) now could we, it would destroy Liberal principles, wares and ideologies? And while we are at it, we recruit a few more upcoming long term corporate criminals, creating new capital and wealth that will vote for us.
Morrison, head wanker and commander in chief of the now fully corporatised clueless commonwealth clan he calls a government.