As state and federal governments fought for control of borders and information during the pandemic, some of the most vulnerable were left at risk.
In the middle of Sydney’s Delta lockdown, St Vincent’s Hospital doctor Professor Steven Faux was pulling up in a van to an inner-city block of flats where his team believed a number of people with disabilities lived. They did not have a list of names or know how many people they would find there; all they knew was that these people had not yet received a COVID-19 vaccine.
Public health experts have warned that federal and state governments must improve their collaboration processes before the next pandemic. They call for better systems for sharing information and delivering services. “Before that it was the state running things, and now we have gone back to the state running things,” he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic unearthed a state government-based parochialism, the panel said, where collaboration with other states was harder than it should have been, and the hodgepodge of virus restrictions and border closures – particularly in relative “peacetime” – became confusing and unmanageable. “People, even within a Ministry of Health, aren’t briefed and kept up to date on what the thinking is about where we’re heading next, what the evidence is that informs our policy,” she said.
Despite asking for the data almost daily, it was only shared with Chant and then-premier Gladys Berejiklian.
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