Aged care operators are pressing the Ministry of Health for a co-ordinated, national-level plan on how it will enable the aged-care sector to deal effectively with a national outbreak of the Covid-19 virus.
We can make as many preparations as we like individually, and we are, but if this thing strikes New Zealand at anything like the scale we are seeing in Italy, for example, our ability to maintain the level of care that our elderly residents require will be severely compromised.
We are well-prepared and well set up to deal with a bout of ‘flu, or a norovirus outbreak. There are things that we do on a regular basis to protect against these that are also useful precautions against Covid-19. These involve early symptom recognition and processes that guard against transmission.
But what we’re talking about, and urging the Ministry to put in place in double-quick order, is a protocol for practical help that will help us deal with an outbreak at scale. Practical things, like how we can access sufficient equipment like masks and surgical gowns.
Emergency staffing should also be part of this national plan. One of the scariest prospects of what we are facing will be what happens if we lose a significant proportion of staff to illness or quarantine. A lot of our residents require hospital-level care, which means they need two people to assist them in their daily living at all times. So we would have people in very dire circumstances if we didn't have staff.
My colleague Simon Wallace of the New Zealand Aged Care Association has been telling the Ministry, quite rightly in my view, that it needs to be in discussion with all of us in the residential care sector about putting a contingency and continuity plan in place at a national level.
Putting plans in place solely with DHBs is not going to cut it. The aged-care sector has more than 35,000 people in care at any one time and some focus needs to be brought onto how the Ministry will support us if this thing runs away on us.
While we continue to hope for the best we need to plan properly for the worst.
We're prepared and ready to talk to government agencies directly - it's a far more effective way of minimising the risk to elderly and managing the situation than doing so through 20 individual DHBs.
For our part, Kerikeri Retirement Village is in close contact with Northland DHB but their focus is a lot wider than just the aged care sector. Yet our requirements by way of large-scale readiness are very specific and quite skills-based, so it makes sense that we should be in close contact directly with the Ministry, who are best placed to help, during this Covod-19 event.
