Kerryn Phelps calls for compulsory masks to stop spread of coronavirus in NSW and for closure of air border with Victoria on Q+A - ABC News

Former Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Kerryn Phelps has called for an end to the "nonsensical" mask debate and for New South Wales to close their air border to Victoria.

Key points:

• Dr Kerryn Phelps says mask do help stop the spread of the disease and that the debate has largely not been based on evidence
• Medical industry experts say the crisis in aged care centres could have been avoided and shortfalls in the industry have been known about for decades
• Dr Phelps said deaths at aged care homes were "avoidable"

Dr Phelps was appearing on the Q+A panel with fellow medical practitioners including respiratory physician Dr Lucy Morgan, GP Dr Vyom Sharma and clinical nurse Abbey Fistrovic and was initially asked whether she felt their should be criminal charges for people breaking quarantine.

While Dr Phelps deflected the legal question, as did all of the panel, she immediately made a call for Australians to be wearing masks in public, particularly due to the current disaster situation in Victoria.

She made that statement while also issuing a dire warning for her own state of NSW.

"The thing that we can do, which is such a simple thing, is to have everyone in the community in masks," the former AMA chief said.

"We need to anticipate that there will be a next wave in New South Wales.

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"At the moment, the numbers are relatively low but there's nothing to say they will remain low."

Host Hamish Macdonald then asked Dr Phelps if she thought masks should be "compulsory" in NSW or at least Sydney.

"We need to head towards them being compulsory," Dr Phelps said, before issuing a firm message for those who don't believe in the value of wearing masks.

"We know with aerosol transmission now, airborne transmission, wearing a mask is some of the best protection that you can have — you protect yourself, you protect others.

"There's been a nonsensical debate for months now, which has been so frustrating because it has not been evidence-based about wearing masks.

"It is one of the single-most responsible things that we can do as members of the community to protect each other."

Dr Phelps also said in her view, NSW would be well served by shutting its air border with Victoria.

"I'm concerned that there are still planes coming in from Melbourne to Sydney without any checking and with people just being asked to self-isolate in Sydney when they arrive," she said, when the show closed with a question about whether Australian families will be able to gather interstate at Christmas.

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"We don't know how many people are actually doing the self-isolating when they arrive.

"There are 17 planes coming from Sydney to Melbourne tomorrow [Tuesday] — that's not a closed border.

"We know there are thousands of active cases in Victoria, there could be up to 10 times as many people who are infected who don't know it and we're just letting people get on planes without having a test before they get on the plane, arriving in Sydney and dispersing into the community.

"NSW is on a precipice and unless we take it seriously and actually have an effective closed border, we are going to see leakage of these cases from Victoria over to New South Wales."

Aged care deaths were 'avoidable'

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While the NSW and Victoria scenario was one a key theme of the episode, so was aged care.

And Q+A put some human faces to the crisis.

Spiros Vasilakis — who lost his mother Maria to COVID-19 at the St Basil's nursing home outbreak — and Christine Golding — whose mother was also a resident there — both appeared on the show.

Ms Golding and Mr Vasilakis raised questions about the sector and why it was not adequately prepared.

Dr Phelps said the deaths and the scenario playing out at aged care homes was "avoidable".

"There should have been a preparedness audit done of aged care homes as soon as we knew there was a COVID outbreak in Australia," she said.

"It was so predictable aged care would be a vulnerable sector and indeed it has been, and it was so avoidable."

She said issues related to understaffing in aged care homes had been going on for two decades and those comments were backed by clinical nurse Abbey Fistrovic, who had worked as an aged care nurse earlier in her career.

"Sometimes you have one registered nurse for a facility with 100 residents," Ms Fistrovic said.

"We have created this perfect storm which has ended in tragedy for people with families in aged care but we knew about it.

"We knew of these problems, we've known them for decades."

Asked if she felt the current situation with patients of some aged care homes dying was preventable, Ms Fistrovic replied that they were.

Queensland Liberal Andrew Laming, who worked as a medical practitioner defended the government response but Labor's spokeswoman for aged care, Ged Kearney, said the Government had failed the sector and that its funding should be made transparent.

"This is a workforce that's working in a sector that has a culture problem, where it is privately operated, they are organisations that are run for profit," Ms Kearney said.

"It's part of a broader systemic failure that the whole system is facing.

"There's lack of accountability and transparency for the funding that goes into aged care.

"People may not know across the whole aged care sector but about $20 billion of federal funding goes into that sector without proper accountability or transparency."

Watch the full episode on iview or via the Q+A Facebook page.

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2020-08-03 19:11:00Z
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