“One thing I will never forget is the line of ambulances coming in and coming out,” Spiros Vasilakis says as he recalls standing outside St Basil’s Home for the Aged in July last year, where his mother contracted Covid-19.
“My mum had died at that point,” he recalls. “And to stand outside a place that was not giving family any answers, seeing residents taken away one after another in ambulances, about to die or already dead … I just remember feeling overwhelmed by sadness.”
By that point, the facility in Fawkner was being overwhelmed by a second wave of the virus spreading throughout Victoria, particularly in aged care homes. St Basil’s would become the site of the state’s deadliest Covid outbreak and Vasilakis’s mother, Maria, 81, was among the victims. Throughout July and August, staff at St Basil’s were furloughed, either sick with the virus or quarantining after being exposed to it.
Infection control protocols broke down, or weren’t implemented at all. An external agency, Aspen Medical, whose staff who did not know the residents or the unique care they each required, was called in to assist. They got infected, too. It took four days for the federal government to be alerted to the first case in St Basil’s – a non-profit residence run by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia – in a staff member infected in early July. By then, it had taken hold.
Throughout July and August, 94 residents and 94 staff members were infected. While 45 residents died from Covid-19, a further five died from neglect during the same period as the workforce succumbed to the virus and gaps were revealed in infection management.
Vasilakis’s sadness turned to anger, an emotion that is still raw one-and-a-half years later. While there were 655 pandemic-related aged care deaths in Victoria in 2020, it is St Basil’s that will be the subject of a coronial inquest starting Monday before the coroner’s court of Victoria. It will run for four weeks, and Vasilakis will be among the 64 witnesses to give evidence.
“St Basil’s was very unprepared and definitely not as proactive as some other aged care homes,” he says. “Staff weren’t wearing PPE until days after the first infection, and testing of the residents occurred seven days later. Apart from being unprepared, the management were also uncooperative when Aspen replaced the staff, which impacted on Aspen’s ability to care for the residents.”
A test result came through on 17 July showing Maria was positive with the virus. Her family were told she was taken to the Royal Melbourne hospital, which was later corrected to being The Alfred. However, the hospital wanted to send her home because Maria’s symptoms were not severe and beds were sorely needed.
“We asked the hospital to keep her there because we knew it might take several days for her to develop more symptoms,” Vasilakis says. “They insisted that she go back to St Basil’s and that she would get the same care there as she would at the hospital, which was absolutely, totally untrue. And my sister and I know this because we witnessed it.
“There was no hospital equipment at the home, no equivalent care. Once, when we went to visit, my mum’s door was fully open despite her room being contaminated with Covid-19. And there was an old lady outside in the corridor walking up and down confused … There were no staff to help her or to stop her wandering into Covid areas.
“At the same time, our mother was lying in her bed, completely unresponsive.”
His mother died on 23 July. Two days later, a staff member called him and his sister to say their mother was alive and well at the facility.
“We had to stop them in their tracks and say: ‘Hey, we know where our mum is. She’s not in your facility. She’s dead’.”
During an August hearing held ahead of the inquest, the court heard the St Basil’s facility manager, Vicky Kos, and chairman, Kon Kontis, had declined to take part in investigations into the tragedy. They will be called to give evidence during the inquest’s final week.
A Guardian Australia analysis of the 10 aged care homes worst affected by coronavirus in Victoria, conducted in September 2020, found that three were controlled by two large companies, which between them received more than $1.45bn in government funding over the past two years and paid out dividends to their shareholders totalling $77m. As the outbreak spread throughout dozens of aged care homes, pressure mounted on the aged care sector and federal government to reveal how some $13bn in taxpayer funding, along with millions in new funding for Covid-19, was being spent to benefit residents.
The coroner will examine how St Basil’s management and staff prepared for Covid, their response when it hit, the timeliness of information provided to staff, residents and families, whether the state and federal governments coordinated their response to the outbreak appropriately, and the adequacy of the replacement workforce deployed to St Basil’s, among other issues.
“Myself and the other families affected, we are still finding out things that we weren’t aware of and it makes us angry,” Vasilakis says. “The full truth has been hidden from us.”
In 2012, a Victorian coroner recommended all aged-care homes appoint a designated infection control manager, develop a document outlining what must be done in the event of an infectious diseases outbreak, and alert the federal government of outbreaks immediately, following a gastroenteritis outbreak in a home that led to the deaths of four residents.
Dr Sarah Russell, an aged care public health researcher who pushed for more transparency around the number of deaths occurring in aged care throughout the pandemic, says: “In my opinion, the horror story that unfolded at St Basil’s and elsewhere in aged care homes in Victoria could have been prevented if the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, and aged care minister, Richard Colbeck, had acted on those former coroner recommendations.
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“If governments would actually act on the some 21 inquiries and reports we have had into the sector, we wouldn’t be in this mess. My concern is after this most recent heartache, recommendations still won’t be acted upon.
“People who lost loved ones during the second wave in aged care are suffering from post-traumatic stress and anger that comes from not having answers, on top of their grief. I just hope this inquest helps them to grieve and heal, and that some good will come out of it.”
