The minister also stood by his decision to attend a three-day Ashes Test as Omicron ran through aged care homes,telling a COVID-19 Senate committee hearing he “continued to pay attention” and spoke daily with providers and departmental officials.
“I’m very careful to balance and acknowledge the different elements of my portfolio,” Senator Colbeck,who is also the Minister for Sport,said.
Senator Colbeck haddeclined a request to appear before the Senate select committee on COVID-19 along with Health Department bureaucrats on January 14,the first day of the Ashes Test in Hobart,saying he was busy dealing with Omicron.
The federal government is under pressure over its handling of the Omicron wave in aged care – which has killed 566 elderly residents this year,making up a third of all COVID-19 deaths – after missing its January 31 deadline to roll out aged care boosters.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison emphasised that the Commonwealth’s aged care booster clinics had been to almost all the nation’s more than 2700 aged care facilities when asked about the figures on Wednesday,and that 61 per cent of residents who died were in palliative care.
“We have visited 99 per cent of all aged care facilities and offered all residents in those facilities a booster shot,” Mr Morrison said.
COVID-19 Taskforce Commander Lieutenant-General John Frewen told the hearing when the booster program began on November 8,some residents did not feel any urgency to receive a jab,as they lived in areas that did not have widespread transmission of COVID-19.