I’ve been talking with all of those organisations regularly, including in the last few days, and they’ve shared their concerns very forcefully. These are people who for 20 months now have been at the front line of our public health response and know from last winter just what outbreak can mean with over 800 deaths in Victoria, particularly from our private aged care facilities.
These people, whether they’re ambos, whether they’re salaried officers, nurses, clinicians, the entire public health workforce have been working like never before in a system that has been busy like never before. And they’ve expressed, quite rightly I think, their concerns about what would happen if we continue to have high levels of uncontrolled infections in our community.
We’re working with them and with our health services to make sure that we have plans in place to try to avoid that. But the best thing we can do as Victorians is to make sure we follow the public health rules, that we get tested and get vaccinated. That’s how that scenario gets avoided. In the likelihood that there will be continued increases in infections, we are working with the health services and all of those groups to put in place the best way
in which we can manage increased demands.
