The case of the Girgarre family who tried and failed multiple times to get through to 000 while driving their unconscious 15-month-old son to seek help is a good representation of the pressure the service is under.
The ambulance bill, which the family was later given and the opposition focused on, was rightly withdrawn.
It shouldn’t have been issued in the circumstances, even though they eventually received an ambulance, which was called by Kyabram District Health Service.
Ambulance response times have worsened significantly according to published data, and from what I’ve been told it is simply a lack of available human resources to staff shifts.
It is an issue in ambulances, and across the health system.
Apparently, it is about to get worse as another wave of COVID-19 washes over us, and politically it seems we are no longer willing to defend ourselves.
Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas received advice from the state’s chief health officer to mandate mask wearing in schools, hospitality, retail and early education settings.
The response was to strongly recommend wearing masks indoors and in crowded settings, and requesting that employers consider working-from-home arrangements that are most appropriate for their workplace and employees based on individual requirements.
The pandemic orders changed at 11.59pm on Tuesday.
In line with advice, the period when someone is considered a recently confirmed case (and therefore exempt from testing and isolation/quarantine requirements) has been revised to four weeks, down from 12 weeks.
This reflects the emerging evidence that new variants of COVID can evade prior immunity gained from infection.
That means a lot more people are going to be forced into isolation/quarantine, and we know from bitter experience the impact that can have on all aspects of life.
Many people will opt to wear masks, work from home and limit their social exposure during what the health experts say will be a critical winter period.
Mandating these sensible responses is now politically unpalatable, despite it making sense.
In announcing the non-binding advice the Victorian Government said Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which are now dominant along the east coast of Australia, are expected to continue to cause increases in new cases, reinfections and hospital admissions — with a 53 per cent increase in the number of Victorians in hospital with COVID over the past two weeks.
During two years of COVID it was drummed into us that decisions would be guided by the best health advice.
The harsh measures put in place were not political decisions, and nor were they things Daniel Andrews and his team wanted to do; they were steps the health authorities said we must take.
The pandemic isn’t over, there are plenty of experts who agree on that, but how seriously you take the warnings is now up to you.
It seems the mandating of public health responses is no longer in the public interest.