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Federal health and aged care minister Mark Butler . Photo : NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage
Opening up
Unvaccinated visitors to enter NSW aged care homes .
Visitors to NSW residential aged care homes are no longer be required to be vaccinated against Covid .
State health authorities announced the reversal of the public health order in mid-July after the state recorded over 10,000 active cases and 2,000 hospitalisations .
Aged care facilities will be able to introduce their own vaccination requirements for visitors , however legal vaccine mandates for staff will remain .
Changes to the visitor rules place NSW in line with both Queensland and Victoria .
Aged care minister Anika Wells said it was important that the states and Commonwealth took a unified approach to prevent the spread of the virus into aged care homes .
“ The chief medical officer is speaking to his state counterparts ... to urge them to keep up mask mandates , even in aged care facilities ,” she told ABC Radio .
New data shows over 2,055 aged care residents have died from the virus in 2022 , a stark increase from the 231 recorded in 2021 and the 686 in 2020 .
Speaking with reporters , federal health and aged care minister Mark Butler warned that “ millions ” of Australians may become infected .
“ We have 250,000 to 300,000 people today who are infected on official data ,” he said .
“ The real number ’ s probably twice that , or maybe even more , according to what we understand about this variant .”
The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee ( AHPPC ) has said the new strains appear to evade protection from previous vaccines .
“ BA . 4 and BA . 5 are associated with increased immune escape and we are likely to see rates of reinfection rise among those who have previously been infected ,” a statement read . ■
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