The NSW and Victorian premiers will push Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to extend pandemic leave payments for workers forced to stay home with COVID-19 if national cabinet decides to keep mandatory isolation rules on Wednesday.
Dominic Perrottet and Daniel Andrews were in lock-step on the issue of Pandemic Leave Disaster Payments on Tuesday despite the state leaders’ opposing stances on whether to reduce the nation’s week-long COVID isolation period to five days.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet (right) and his Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews both called for Pandemic Leave Disaster Payments to be extended beyond September 30.Credit:Justin McManus
The leaders presented a united front as they announced $70 million to fund 25 new urgent care clinics to treat non-critical conditions like mild infections, fractures or burns and bulk bill all patients to ease pressure on hospitals emergency departments.
“I do not believe it is right that forced isolation continues, and the state does not provide that financial support,” said Perrottet, who will urge his state and territory counterparts to cut the isolation period to five days. “The state – being the federal and state governments – in circumstances where health restrictions are in place that restrict people’s liberty, the state needs to provide that support,” Perrottet said.
Workers without sick leave who have to isolate with COVID-19 can claim up to $750. The scheme is due to expire on September 30 after Albanese extended the payments from their initial end date of July.
“We have stepped in from a state level and provided 50/50 in terms of those financial arrangements,” Perrottet said.
“The reality is if that support isn’t there then what you will have is people leaving isolation and working to provide for their families, so we have a responsibility to do that, and I’ll make that point very clear tomorrow,” he said.
Perrottet began laying the groundwork for scrapping the mandatory isolation period earlier this week, arguing workers needed to “respect others [and] when you are sick you stay at home”.
Conversely, Andrews maintained his cautious stance on mandatory isolation as he stood alongside Perrottet on Tuesday, saying it was time to get “fresh advice” from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee [AHPPC], which will meet ahead of national cabinet on Wednesday.
“I’m inclined to follow that advice,” Andrews said.
However, he was in agreement with his NSW counterpart on pandemic leave payments.
“If you make people choose between feeding their kids and stopping infections, that’s not a choice we should make any family have to make,” Andrews said. “Those pandemic payments have worked and if we are going to continue isolation then those payments should continue as well,” Andrews said.
As the AHPPC prepares to provide the government with their updated recommendation on mandatory isolation, University of Melbourne’s Professor James McCaw said it was not the time to remove isolation completely.
“That would be a risky decision at the moment,” said McCaw, who leads a team that provides epidemic analysis to the federal government.
Going straight to zero days’ mandatory isolation “could easily halt the decline” in COVID-19 transmission, he said.
Reducing the isolation period to five days would also reduce the rate of decline in transmission, “so while cases might still drop, that drop will take longer”.
“That has consequences, given the health system is under pressure and getting cases as low as possible would be positive,” he said.
The premiers’ plan to establish 25 additional urgent care clinics in each state, and in partnership with general practitioners, is an attempt to address the record demand on public hospitals.
NSW emergency departments contends with more than 3 million presentations each year, the Bureau of Health Information data shows.
“Across the country, state and territory health systems are under pressure as a result
of the pandemic and we need to boost support so communities can continue to access
the care they need,” Perrottet said.
President of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine Dr Clare Skinner said that while new urgent care clinics could give people faster care for non-critical conditions “they are unlikely to solve the current crisis”.
She said the biggest issue contributing to pressures on emergency departments was patients who could not be sent home after their initial treatment because they required further care –and that would not be the type of care provided at an urgent care service.
NSW emergency departments have recorded increasing presentations in the highest triage categories for more than a decade, and the number of people with potentially life-threatening conditions has more than doubled since 2012.
“This issue can only be fixed by an increase in significant resourcing across the health system, and particularly into inpatient capacity to accept patients,” Skinner said.
With Dana Daniel
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