Why private aged care is likely to stay in lockdown beyond Thursday

The state secretary of Australia’s nursing union says she expects Victoria’s private aged care facilities to remain in lockdown beyond Thursday.

It comes after a worker at a second facility tested positive to COVID-19.

And workers at two Royal Freemasons aged care homes have been identified as close contacts of one of the COVID-19 positive workers at Arcare in Maidstone.

Residents at all those facilities are now in self-isolation.

“We need time to be able to test and stop further infections from happening,” Lisa Fitzpatrick, from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, told Neil Mitchell on Monday morning.

She said the federal government, which runs private aged care, had again let Victoria down.

“I think over the coming days we will see more (cases),” Ms Fitzpatrick said.

“This is the plight of private aged care staff.

“They can’t get full-time employment at their workplace and so they are forced to work at multiple workplaces in order to get a full-time income.”

Press PLAY below to hear her explain why staff are STILL working at multiple facilities