Families of the 50 residents who died in a Melbourne nursing home during Australia’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak have been left outraged and heartbroken after the home was fined $150,000 by the Victorian County Court.
St Basil’s Homes for the Aged in Victoria was charged by workplace watchdog WorkSafe with failing to provide information, instruction and training necessary to enable employees to work in a way that was safe and without risks to health in 2022, after 45 residents died from COVID-related complications within a month of the first outbreak in 2020.
Another five residents died from alleged neglect, according to a coronial inquest.
Earlier this month, the Melbourne aged care provider pleaded guilty in the County Court to one count of failing to provide a safe working environment to staff during the coronavirus pandemic between March 13 and July 12, 2020.
At a sentence hearing in the County Court of Victoria on Wednesday, Judge Trevor Wraight said St Basil’s had failed to adequately protect staff and residents from the threat of coronavirus, fining the aged care home $150,000 with a conviction.
The judge noted while the aged care home attempted to enforce some infection-control measures and training between March and July 2020, there was “no benefit” in having a system in place unless all staff were aware of it and it was appropriately monitored and implemented. The home was hit with the deadly outbreak of the coronavirus in July and August of that year.
“Here there were weaknesses in the system that led to five of its employees not receiving the adequate training required, giving rise to the identified risks,” he said.
“In my view, in all the circumstances, St Basil’s departure from its duty in this instance represents a relatively serious breach.”
But outside court, the families of those who died while in the care of St Basil’s Homes labelled the fine as a joke and an insult.
Spiros Vasilakis, whose mother Maria died in the outbreak, demanded somebody be held accountable for the deaths.
“A penalty of $150,000 to answer for 45 lives … That’s one that doesn’t pass the pub test,” he said.
“A fine, I’m sorry, doesn’t cut it. What cuts is someone being held accountable.”
He said the aged care home had failed in its duty of care at the “most crucial time” for his elderly mother and so many others.
He was horrified and shocked when he found out after his mother’s death, the aged care home was attempting to use her image to promote their reopening.
“I got an anonymous call to have a look at their website. I went to their website, and they’re using my mum’s image … as a selling point to reopen,” he said.
In handing down the fine and conviction, Wraight said had the aged care home not pleaded guilty, he would have fined the organisation $250,000. The maximum penalty would be a fine of almost $1.5 million.
The judge found that St Basil’s failed to provide appropriate training to all staff at the facility on the appropriate use of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, and mitigation measures to protect them and residents against the virus after national guidelines for residential aged care were published on March 13.
At the start of the outbreak, St Basil’s had 92 residents and 102 staff.
The court was told several training sessions at the Fawkner aged care home in Melbourne’s northern suburbs were held with external doctors and infection-control nurses.
However, five staff members did not attend any of these sessions and not all staff working at the facility understood the appropriate measures needed to curb transmission during an outbreak, including the importance of how to put on and take off PPE.
The first confirmed case of COVID came on July 9 and, by July 15, dozens of cases were identified when all staff and residents were tested.
Following the sentence, Maxine Tsihlakis told reporters outside the court she was speaking on behalf of her mother, Georgia, who died at the home.
“This is a joke,” she said as she held back tears. “The pain that we go through … it’s like manslaughter. They should be held accountable.”
Tsihlakis said she remained haunted by a decision to move her mother, who had dementia, into the home years ago.
In 2021, The Age reported conditions had become so horrific at St Basil’s Homes for the Aged during its deadly COVID-19 outbreak that some residents had tried to bash down the centre’s front door to escape the bedlam and find food.
One site report compiled at the height of the outbreak in July 2020 found there was “no physical distancing [among temporary staff] … clinical waste bags lying in corridors, piled up in corridors, in residents’ rooms (left open), multiple dirty meal trays lying around [the] facility”.
A senior Northern Hospital doctor, Sandra Brown, whose team visited during this period, warned of “residents starving to death and dying of dehydration from basic care needs not being met”.
A coronial inquest into the 45 coronavirus deaths is ongoing and has heard allegations residents were not properly fed or cared for throughout the outbreak.
Evacuating the home’s residents during the outbreak was never seriously considered, and outbreak managers instead replaced the entire staff with an emergency workforce, Coroner John Cain has been previously told.
St Basil’s is also facing a class action suit for allegedly breaching duty of care led by the families of those who died.
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Melissa Cunningham is a crime and justice reporter for The Age. She has previously covered health.Connect via X or email.