If we call it a target, the Nation had rolled out approx 2.0 million doses by the end of April and approx 3.5million doses of vaccine by the end of May. That’s twice as many as the 1.6 million doses required to fully vaccinate everyone in group 1A.
Whether we call it a failed promise or failure to meet a target, it’s still a massive failure to deliver on either.
We will need to disagree on whether the Government’s original offer is excusable. The industry is equally accountable for failing to ensure they were at the front of the queue. The medical advice and agreed plan were on what was needed to be delivered to whom.
Everyone has a lot of targets or goals in life. Not achieving them isn’t a failure. If this was the case, we are all failures.
Turning any target into a promise is politicising what was said.
The government didn’t meet it’s end of March target for vaccinating age care workers. It didn’t promise to vaccinate all by then.
While there are reasons why the target wasn’t achieved which need to be explained (and partially was at the end of March), it is the response to accelerate vaccinations which is key. Something lacking and discussed elsewhere in the community was the belief vaccinations for critical, essential workers would be mandatory. This was a policy failure possibly in a rush to try and vaccinated as many groups as possible to meet competing demands and interests (example is meat workers were given the same priority as front line medical staff, why…and justification hasn’t been explained)?
Moving forward, how the government and community as a whole support the vaccination program is critical to ensure we can move on from Covid controls, including the highly disruptive lockdowns, and return to our pre-Covid lives.
That is a matter of opinion when it is a government and potentially their single most important program during their tenure. Not an individual.
That is a standard catch cry for failure. Forget the failure and look for tomorrow, no changes to how ‘we’ work (or fail) is required, right?
I am sure you understand 360 degree improvement processes such as ISO 9001, but is there any evidence this government has demonstrated any capability to improve, as compared to its ability to circle its wagons, rationalise, or just reject and try to move on?
I suspect any further discussion on this will be coloured by our individual life views, so I will step back now.
It isn’t a catch phrase for failure, but improving the future from lessons learnt in the past.
Not learning from these lessons and repeating them hoping the outcome would be different would be a failure.
Not reaching the March or any other target is disappointing at worse, as a laggard rollout impacts on us all.
It is worth noting other countries haven’t met vaccination targets, but the same media reporting our targets as promises and failures, are reporting these other countries programs as successes. Why, because population wise, these other countries rollouts are ahead of Australia. This is evidence of the politicisation of the issue within the media.
On that we can agree.
It doesn’t change the fact that we had a plan and have not measured our performance against it.
Any one who has any management experience knows why measuring performance against targets is fundamental to delivering a plan. If it’s not measured there is no need to improve because none is keeping score. It’s all so much like an under 6’s footy match fully of beginners more intent on taking advantage of the free time, than serious about scoring goals.
As a gentle reminder the Government was quite concise about what needed to be done.
After five months it cannot report at the same level of rollout detail that it planned for. The Federal Parliament as a whole is not a mob of under 6 preschoolers in the playground. Or at least we should all hope not.
Australia has shown it is able to deliver 70-80,000 vaccine doses a day. Vaccinating the balance, IE approx 200,000 Aged Care and Disability Care Staff, lesson learnt. Not measuring performance is a fundamental failure, and not a new one to add to the book of good management practices.
What were RSL Lifecare thinking to let the situation in their facilities get to this?
In defence of RSL, The Guardian reported. RSL LifeCare’s chief executive, Graham Millett, applauded the mandate, but he told Guardian Australia the chief barrier to rapid vaccination in the sector was difficulty accessing the jab.
The government had initially planned to use in-reach teams to vaccinate workers, but abandoned the plan, forcing staff to rely on leftover vaccines not used on residents.
The Coalition had earlier promised to vaccinate aged care workers at 13 pop-up hubs, which were to be established nationwide in May. But only three have been set up and all are in Sydney.
I would go even further than that. It wasn’t even a target.
The Feds specifically executed a plan to vaccinate the residents in Aged Care Facilities, not the staff.
You can be an armchair critic and argue that that was a sightly strange and awkward decision - and there are sensible arguments both for and against.
(As an example of an argument against including aged care workers, the expectation is that everyone will be sick as a dog after getting the vaccine. So having 100 sick aged care residents and 0 staff to care for them is not very practical.)
It is true that the entire vaccine rollout has consistently been running behind schedule and it could be suggested that there was an element of political naivety in publicising a schedule that will then be used politically to beat the government about the head. That’s politics for you.
My comment was specifically about the schedule but, no, it is the job of the Opposition to find something to whine about so even if well planned and well executed there would be something.
As a typical example, if the government does something that the Opposition agrees with then the Opposition will
claim that they have been calling for it for years (whether true or not) and criticise the amount of time that it took (whether reasonable or not), or
claim that the government hasn’t gone far enough (whether a reasonable claim or not).
It is not as if every one of our esteemed pollies does not start every sentence blaming the opposing side with the issues of the day, followed by extolling how great their own side is.
Perhaps a self fulfilling demonstration of why scientific advice should not be relied upon?
Of those we talk to in aged care daily (we’re locked out at present) it remains an unbelievable situation.
Firstly that the residents were not asked to front up in their facility for vaccination until May.
Secondly that the staff were not included in any initiatives to ensure delivery, and were left out in the cold.
Finally other oldies (I’m not that old really) who are fully vaccinated have been locked out from visiting, while the aged care facilities are full of unvaccinated staff, able to turn up to work every day.
We all know that’s not true though. The plan was never perfect. The changing advice doesn’t help.
Perhaps that is justified on the basis of the scientific advice i.e. that full vaccination does not absolutely prevent your being sick or being a carrier. It reduces the likelihood of your being sick and reduces the severity if you do get sick. So in a risk averse world, what would you do if you were running an ACF?
Have made sure all my staff were fully vaccinated and at the head of the queue, per the original Group 1A priorities.
Something that has been lost when some for political gain have been promoting (be it briefly) less than high and full vaccination rates as suitable for removing restrictions.
Unfortunately the ACF’s have not been given the ability to make independent assessments on a case by case basis. The greatest risk remains the unvaccinated staff.
That wasn’t the question though. The question was regarding what you would do about fully vaccinated visitors.
In respect of staff, Aged Care Facilities can also point out that they don’t (or didn’t) have the legal authority to force their staff to be vaccinated.
Quite apart from legal authority, in a supposedly free society, we should at least have pause for thought before making vaccination mandatory.
I am not saying that individual rights trump community welfare. I am perhaps suggesting that the default position is that you should have a right until such time as the government takes it away - and government should pause for thought before taking it away. Any such taking away of rights should be necessary and proportionate, considered and backed by evidence.
My understanding is that until recently ACFs did not have the authority but now the government has given it to them so that ACFs can “make sure all the staff are fully vaccinated”.
Should the government have put that authority in place a year ago (so that it was available as soon as the vaccines were available)? Maybe. But compulsion does tend to have some blowback. It wouldn’t necessarily have led to a better outcome. (For example, the concern has always been that mandating vaccination will cause attrition in ACF staff numbers.)
Have you talked to any ACF? Anyone who works in an ACF? I haven’t - hence I don’t know what conversations were had.
One thing I do know is that the government didn’t know from ACFs how many of their staff were vaccinated. So there is a reporting and information gap there, which I believe is being remedied.
That all but has to be variable from ACF to ACF, company to company, and whether they asked or did not ask is an absolute across all, just pointing out that the pub test is not surprised by self-serving justifications of ‘why’, especially under the circumstances.
One does not have to be an employee to have knowledge or at least good insights how ACF’s operate than they have to be an MP to understand how parliament ‘operates’.
We can only relate to one facility in Qld first hand. The staff have been very sharing and the management information flow reliable. It helps to attend often 3-4 times or more each week.
From first hand exchanges it was evident the ACF we know first hand was waiting for the Government contractor to contact them, and advise when they were going to arrive at the facility. It was towards the end of April when we received formal advice the local area vaccination program would begin. It included several high profile facilities, including one from the same operator. It did not include our local facility. Our mum was only approached in May.
The rest is a long story, snippets of which I’ve shared previously.
At the same time there were staff sharing their uncertainties about the when. It’s true some were concerned about the what. The flip flopping, mixed messaging and differences between the government leadership and sound medical advice appears to have locked them in. More so that the Govt which is not when one considers workplace conditions or branding, flavour of the month with aged care staff, and was putting it’s spin on things. I’ll add that it was not until about the time the Govt contractor was turning up in May for the residents, the staff shared they were not included.
When we first hit Covid in 2020 the CMO Brendan Murphy and states took the front seat. The Federal Pollies and Govt brought up the rear with Job Keeper and baggage train. 2021 is not the same with the baggage train now out of control. It’s a simplification.
True there is a gap. Of course everyone I know has been asked to verify why they are eligible prior to vaccination. We were asked by the CofA App when we had our first dose. More than 6 weeks ago. It seems a terrible oversight that in asking the core questions on eligibility no one sought to keep track of that answer?
