Health and Aged Care Minister Greg Hunt has been slammed over failing to know how many aged care residents who died from Covid-19 during the Omicron wave had received their booster.
Appearing on RN Breakfast, Mr Hunt came under fire from presenter Patricia Karvelas for failing to have the data, before trying to change the subject to PPE being rolled out.
When pressed further as to why more than 74,000 aged care residents had not received their booster, Mr Hunt sought to put the blame on the residents’ families.
It comes as Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck told the Covid-19 committee on Tuesday that the aged care sector was performing “extremely well” despite the Omicron outbreak.
Senator Colbeck told the inquiry there had been 471 deaths in aged care since January 1, but he was unable to answer how many of those people had been boosted.
According to Mr Hunt, there have been 777 deaths in aged care linked to Covid-19 since July 2021, but he did not know how many of those had occurred since January 1.
Instead, he began to tell Karvelas how many units of PPE had been delivered to aged care centres in the last four weeks.
Cutting him off, Karvelas asked him to instead provide details about the deaths.
“There’s a figure I’m looking at minister, and I don’t mean to be rude, but (Senator Colbeck) couldn’t answer yesterday how many of the 471 people who died in residential aged care (since January 1) with Covid-19 had received a booster. Can you give us that information?” Karvelas asked.
Mr Hunt said as it was up to states to obtain that data, he did not have it on hand, an answer Karvelas was not happy with.
“Why don’t you have that data?” she said.
Mr Hunt replied: “That data is collected by the states through the coronial process or other processes …”
He was cut off by Karvelas asking “have you asked for it?”
“Of course we have,” he responded.
Karvelas asked why the states hadn’t provided it.
“It’s such a key question. how many of those who have died have actually been boosted? that’s the key question and we can’t answer it right now. Why?” she asked.
Mr Hunt said the “very simple answer” was that at this stage, the material had not been provided by the states who collect through the public health units.
At the committee on Wednesday, it was revealed that while 89 per cent of aged care residents had received their first two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, only 66 per cent had received a booster.
In turn, Mr Hunt implored the families of the 74,000 un-boosted aged care residents to consent to having their loved ones jabbed again.
“Over 99 per cent of facilities have received booster visits … My gentle message to families is please, please please allow your loved ones to have heat booster to provide that comfort,” Mr Hunt said.
“We’ll keep going back and providing those opportunities … Not all have chosen to take their booster.”
