Government to people with disabilities: just get your own vaccine, OK?

When even Scott Morrison admits that the government has to lift its game, you know that something has gone thoroughly, abominably wrong.

The rollout of vaccinations to people in residential disability care has gone wrong. Badly, disgracefully, offensively wrong. So wrong that Morrison conceded this week that “we’ve got to step up the performance there, and there’s no doubt about that”. He said he’d be working with Greg Hunt and Linda Reynolds to address it.

Linda “Empathy” Reynolds is the NDIS minister but this stuff-up is entirely by Hunt and his department. More specifically, by the private sector “in-reach” teams that are supposed to be administering vaccinations in aged care and disability residential care facilities.

On Monday, the government admitted just 1000 disability care residents had been vaccinated so far, along with another 1500 sector workers. That total of 2500 compares with about 1650 vaccinations for residents and workers nearly a month ago. That’s when Health secretary Professor Brendan Murphy promised that the rollout to the residential disability sector would ramp up “soon”. Presumably he meant years, rather than months.

The rollout to the aged care and residential disability care sectors was supposed to have been completed by the end of March. The end of May is coming and the residential disability sector continues to be almost completely ignored. It’s beyond shameful, and the Health Department has offered no explanation other that that it’s all “complex”. Any official statement about the residential disability care sector rollout is now accompanied by a recommendation that people with disabilities can go to their GPs for a vaccination.

In other words, we can’t deliver, so do it yourself.

Health officials knew it was complex because, unusually, they actually consulted with the sector in planning the rollout, and understood from the beginning of the year that the residential disability sector would be much harder to reach than the aged care sector, given residential facilities typically house a small number of people. None of that evidently influenced the planning of the rollout.

Nor is there much evidence that the rollout to both sectors is improving. The rollout — evidently mainly to aged care facilities — picked up speed in late April but then flattened out again the following week; last week was a better week but this week has not continued the momentum.

The other part of the rollout directly controlled by the Commonwealth is via GPs, and that has lifted noticeably in recent days. GPs are administering 45,000-50,000 doses consistently every day, compared with fewer than 40,000 a day in early April.

But it’s the states who are pushing the numbers up — yesterday’s total doses of over 95,000 was easily the highest daily total so far. In April, the Commonwealth’s GP and residential care programs accounted for about three jabs in every four. In May, that has fallen to about two in every three; in the past week, the Commonwealth’s contribution fell to 64%.

Maybe it’s time to get the states to take charge of the residential care sector rollout. Perhaps they can save the country from the profound shame of treating people with disabilities with such contempt.