Thursday, 9 September 2021

 Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:42): My question is again to the Minister for Health. Minister, with projections of a spike in COVID cases, why are only 574 of the 4000 promised ICU beds, in the minister’s own words, ‘ready to go’ at this point in time?

 Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:42): Can I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question and suggest to the Leader of the Opposition that perhaps if he had have looked at the entire comment rather than selectively picking one particular set of words, he might have had the answer to his own question. Because of course whilst today there are that many, or when the comment was made there were that many, ICU beds up and running, the context in which those comments were made and continue to be made is that in the context of a response to the coronavirus pandemic we have in place a series of tiered or phased hospital responses which can go well beyond the number that we have up and running—the 500 figure the honourable Leader of the Opposition referred to.

In fact as we speak, in addition to the four main adult hospitals and in addition to the specialist Royal Children’s Hospital, Royal Women’s Hospital and the Monash, other hospitals that would take paediatric or elderly COVID virus patients, we are, on the basis of the increasing number of infections, scaling up substantially beyond that—breaking out from storage the 4000 ventilators, refurbishing and re-establishing wards, whether they be at the Austin, whether they be at Barwon, whether they be at the Monash or a range of others—all with a view or in the expectation that we will be, as we seek to progress in the new arrangements of managing the outbreaks as they develop whilst responding primarily with vaccination responses, managing those outbreaks and infections in the community and in our hospitals in the best way we can.

The ICUs and the fantastic work done by our staff in those areas are beyond compare, but they can be supported by making sure that we have every Victorian vaccinated as soon as we possibly can, and that requires us to have the adequate supply of vaccines. But it also means staying safe in our community to assist those ICU nurses by, if you are in the regions, following the different rules that now apply through the public health orders to keep you open and safe and, if you are in metropolitan Melbourne, following the rules that can get us to firstly 70 per cent single dose and then ultimately 70 per cent second and 80 per cent second dose as soon as we possibly can for that careful, graduated, sustainable, safe reopening. In terms of ICUs, every commitment that the government has made is there, scalable and deliverable, and I want to thank all those hardworking frontline healthcare workers for their important role in that effort.

 Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:45): I ask if the minister will guarantee that the public health system will be able to cope with the projected spike in COVID cases, given thousands of promised beds have still not been delivered and put in place as he said they would be.

 Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:46): I can reassure the house that this government will follow the public health advice every step of the way to make sure, as we respond to this delta outbreak—and at the same time the rollout is one of the key parts of the response to it, the commonwealth vaccination program—and in the expectation that as the coronavirus delta variant increases in its infectivity and impact on members of our community and we see a rise in infections and we see a rise in cases in hospitals, that we will respond as per the schedules and the responses that our public health teams and our health services have in place to give those people the best support we can. But what we do need to do is to manage that in a way that is based on the public health advice, not for the three-card trick of throwing everything open at once.