After the death of two people with Covid-19 at a Christchurch rest home, the Age Care Association is once again calling for new rest home residents to be tested before admission.
Association chief executive Simon Wallace said the deaths of two Rosewood rest home residents in Linwood showed how vulnerable its residents were to the virus.
Professor Brendan Murphy, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer has said that while testing resources are globally finite, they should be applied where they are of the greatest use, such as at aged care facilities.
“We all know that the ideal situation is to exist in bubbles of just two or three people, but aged care facilities represent more than 600 very large clusters of the most vulnerable people in New Zealand, and they deserve to be protected,” Mr Wallace said.
“It is a tragedy waiting to happen.”
If tested positive, whether from the hospital or the community, the Association said they would not want to admit the person.
The Association is also calling for all front-line aged care workers, whether symptomatic or not, to be tested.
When asked yesterday why not all of Rosewood rest home’s residents who were thought to be exposed to Covid-19 were not tested, Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said testing would not tell health workers anything more as the group was already being treated as if they had the virus.
“For some elderly… the extra distress of having a test which they might not completely understand why they’re being tested, that’s not something we need to do,” she said.
However, she said this choice was specific to the group from Rosewood rest home.
The two latest fatalities announced today were older people who had underlying health conditions. Both were linked to existing Covid-19 clusters and one was from Rosewood rest home.
A woman in her 90s from Rosewood died yesterday from the virus.
Dr McElnay said there was a new cluster at an aged residential care centre in Christchurch known as the George Manning.
New Zealand’s total death toll from Covid-19 is four.
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