Most of the staff at a Sydney aged care home at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak did not turn up to work on Wednesday night because they were concerned about endangering their own family members, the union representing aged care workers has said.
BaptistCare, which runs the Dorothy Henderson Lodge in Macquarie Park, refused to comment when asked if a number of staff had failed to turn up to their shift after news broke of a Covid-19 outbreak at the facility.
But the Health Services Union secretary Gerard Hayes said the union had been told by staff at the facility that “most” of the workers rostered to work on Wednesday night had called in sick and the shift was covered by a work hire agency.
Residents at the aged care centre have been confined to their rooms and employees have been told to stay home and self-isolate if they show any symptoms, as health authorities struggle to contain the virus.
Hayes said two employees at the facility told the union they were concerned that by attending work they risked exposing immunocompromised members of their own family.
“They are concerned that if they go there they might bring it home and their loved ones might be impacted,” he said.
Guardian Australia understands the union planned to apply for a right of entry permit under workplace health and safety laws on Thursday afternoon to ensure the facility remained a safe workplace for staff.
Meanwhile, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission is conducting audits of aged care facilities that it viewed as “poorly equipped” to handle Covid-19.
Commissioner Janet Anderson told Radio National on Thursday that “less than 100” aged care facilities were identified on an annual basis as having “fallen short of best practice standards in relation to infection control” and those facilities would be the focus of the audits.
Australia’s chief health officers and federal officials are meeting with the aged care sector on Friday.
Health authorities in New South Wales have confirmed four positive cases of Covid-19 at the facility. On Thursday they confirmed that a 95-year-old woman, who died in hospital on Tuesday night, had tested positive to the virus.
The first person identified with the virus in the facility was an aged care worker in her 50s, who had not travelled overseas recently. An 82-year-old man who resided in the same part of the facility as the deceased woman and was cared for by a team that included the infected worker also tested positive, and is in a stable condition at Ryde hospital.
Health minister Brad Hazzard said a 70-year-old male resident who lived in a different part of the facility had also tested positive, indicating that infection control measures had not stopped the spread of the virus.
Hazzard said the facility had shown “very good practice” by caring for its residents in “pods”, meaning that staff did not work across the whole facility.
“What is challenging for [NSW Health] to understand is that particular gentleman [the 70-year-old man] appears to have had no contact with the nursing staff member,” he said. “So that presents obviously another challenge to try and trace contacts.”
He told reporters on Thursday that given the continued spread of the virus — with 22 confirmed cases in NSW alone and 52 Australia-wide — containment may be unlikely.
Authorities have also contacted the parents of around 17 children who visited the centre in a group from Banksia Cottage childcare centre at Macquarie University on 24 February.
The chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, said the childcare centre reported an outbreak of sickness and that a partner of one of the childcare workers, who had respiratory symptoms, had tested negative for coronavirus.
Chant said authorities would meet with parents and children on Thursday night to conduct assessments “for the abundance of caution”.
Children have shown a more mild response to Covid-19 than adults. Elderly people and those with underlying issues such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory conditions are most at risk of severe cases.
In a statement released on Thursday, BaptistCare said the health and safety of its residents and staff was its “utmost priority.”
It said it was “experienced in disease control measures and we have had best-practice precautions in place across our aged care centres in NSW and ACT”.
“Our staff have shown great dedication in the past days in their commitment to care for our residents and we continue to bolster our regular teams on the ground with additional specialist support from other locations across the state,” the statement said. “NSW Health also has a team of experts guiding the response at Macquarie Park.”
BaptistCare said it had “taken a firm approach to ensure any staff identified as being at risk are isolated and we have taken the added precaution of confining residents to their rooms across the centre”.
