Thursday, 8 February 2024

COVID-19

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:29): (688) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Health, and it is in relation to long COVID. Obviously, as COVID is still around, there are still many people who are suffering from long COVID. The action I seek is an update from the minister about what discussions she has had with her federal counterpart around implementing the recommendations of the federal parliamentary inquiry into long COVID that was conducted by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport. I have been contacted by a number of people, and one in particular, who I think the minister is well aware of. But it is a debilitating condition. Around one in 20 people, I understand, have had some form of these symptoms after a COVID infection. They include things like fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain and insomnia, and that can persist for many months. The experience of long COVID has been found to be associated with those conditions but then also leading to some mental health issues, and it has been very stressful for people to try and get back to work.

I recently spoke to Jordan. Jordan’s story is like that of many Victorians who are living with this complex health condition. He is 36, with no pre-existing conditions. He was young, fit and healthy and running up to 70 kilometres per week, he told me. For the last 17 months, since he contracted COVID, he has really struggled to return to the quality of life that he had prior to that infection. He really does not understand. He is very keen to understand what has triggered this – whether he has got some pre-determining factors – and what is happening through the various health departments to assist people in looking at this debilitating condition.

The Victorian government’s current advice on its Better Health Channel website for where to get help for long COVID is to visit your GP. Well, that is hardly going to be helpful when the government’s health tax comes into play and health clinics have to close down. I have just got off the phone from somebody who is involved in this area, and their clinics have up to 400,000 Victorian patient consultations each year. That health tax is going to have a massive impact. Nevertheless I want to return to the adjournment issue around what the government is doing and what discussion has been had with their federal counterparts. This government actually put so many restrictions on Victorians through the period of COVID – through those dark, dark years that we never want to return to. Now they have dropped the ball on absolutely everything, yet people like Jordan are still trying to navigate their way through and getting no support from government. So I would like to understand, as I said, what the minister is doing to find out from her federal counterparts after that House of Representatives inquiry.