How the Victorian Government failed COVID-19 contract tracing

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The hits keep coming for Daniel Andrews’ Victorian Government, with a 9News investigative report revealing that the Government scaled back contract tracing efforts just as the virus outbreak began from failed hotel quarantine:

Evidence of Victoria’s contract tracing data is illustrated in the next chart showing the virus erupting in Victoria, while cases have remained under control in NSW:

Recall also that the Andrews Government starved the public health unit of funding, leaving it critically short of contract tracers:

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Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton’s team was so poorly funded that top bureaucrats warned the Andrews government multiple times the state’s public health unit was the worst resourced in the country.

While the alarm was sounded in May 2019, according to documents seen by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, the Department of Health and Human Services still had only 14 contact tracers by the time coronavirus took hold in Australia in March.

The government was put on notice about the poor state of its public health team last year when the DHHS document comparing Victoria’s resourcing to NSW and Queensland was circulated as part of a push for extra funding.

The document, which describes the main role of a public health team as “preventing the transmission of communicable diseases [and] managing outbreaks”, gives a stark assessment of Victoria’s preparedness…

Several DHHS sources claim the government’s difficulties in getting the second deadly wave of coronavirus under control could be linked to ongoing problems with contact tracing…

“PHOs [public health officers] in the CDPC [Communicable Disease and Prevention Control] Unit in Victoria have been managing much higher case load numbers and had higher population ratios than similar staff in other states and territories, with the number of PHO staff in Victoria half the size of … (New South Wales),” it warned…

According to the documents, Victoria had just six physicians in its health protection branch compared to 24 in NSW and 17 in Queensland…

Despite the warnings that Victoria needed a bigger public health team, the number of staff had been in decline for at least 18 months before coronavirus hit Australia…

“The bungling of hotel quarantine is a major factor in Victoria’s case numbers, but even before that we were struggling,” another department source said…

No wonder COVID-19 cases continue to run rampant in Victoria, which let the virus in and then failed to control its spread.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.