The federal government would have been better prepared for COVID-19 outbreaks at Newmarch House and other nursing homes if it had acted on the 2019 interim findings of the Aged Care Royal Commission, a leading aged care authority said.

Monash University Professor Joseph Ibrahim told Newscorp’s Aged Care News360: “We knew about the lack of coordination between federal and state departments and the providers were not up to managing a COVID pandemic, yet we hand over the residents as if they are possessions to be owned by the provider to make money from but not provide the care that’s needed.”

He said the federal government had no plan only a set of “farcical” guidelines that “they put a disclaimer to.”

He said the guidelines were framed so providers had to negotiate with hospitals, arrange for PPE and “organise the entire program”.

“If the government had looked to what Hong Kong did with the SARS epidemic, we would have known well in advance what to do with having infection control nurses present, better training, better surge workforce, better coordination between state and federal public health units, and we would have avoided all the messing about that has led to the deaths of people.”