After a horror summer marred by illness and death from COVID-19, the Illawarra's aged care homes are finally enjoying "a temporary reprieve" from the virus.
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According to the federal government's latest weekly report on COVID-19 and aged care, there are now only a handful of cases in facilities across the region.
Nationally, there are now 210 outbreaks in aged care facilities, down from 1198 on January 20.
For Warrigal CEO Mark Sewell, whose facilities have been among the region's worst hit over the past two months, the fall in cases numbers and outbreaks is a much welcome reprieve.
"Warrigal alone had more than 500 people infected in January, staff and residents, and now we only have a handful," he said.
"We're seeing it as a temporary reprieve.
"We now have more than 1700 visitors coming into our homes a week, and we have people booking in every day or once a week to see their loved ones.
"We've got a lot of people coming, the staff are all back on deck, and we've got our volunteers coming in and opening up cafes and doing things. There is a complete resurgence of people again back in aged care."
Warrigal Mount Terry was the company's worst hit facility, with 53 staff and 82 residents contracting the virus. Sadly, 10 residents at the centre died.
"This was our longest outbreak, and our latest home to come out of an outbreak," Mr Sewell said.
"It's the only one we had the ADF come and give us assistance, and it is the home we are learning the most from."
He said there was an independent review underway in the nine Warrigal homes that had an outbreak, to look at why some were short and well-contained and others were prolonged.
"We're not looking to blame anyone, but obviously staff, visitors and residents moving around made a big difference," he said.
"From December 29, [Omicron] went really fast into our homes and it was mostly staff infected during Christmas and New Year gatherings.
"We have been trying to help them realise that it wasn't their fault - they were following the government's new rules about being out and about."
Mr Sewell said residents were relieved to be out of the worst of Omicron, after a "heartbreaking" period where they had been unable to see their loved ones.
"People had to stay in their room, as ordered by the health department, and they couldn't have visitors," he said.
"Many people have had visitors all their lives, they've seen their kids and grandkids for decades and then all of a sudden, sometimes in their last year or two of their life, they had to go for weeks or even months without visitors.
"It's the worst thing, and we are absolutely obsessed with openness and community connection and visitors."
"Of course, the big risk is that we'll have another wave, another strain, and that we'll have the flu and another strain as winter hits.
"We're all on tenterhooks, we all know more than we did in January about how to handle a mass outbreak, but at the moment, we're being very positive."
He said it was important that any visitors to aged care homes were triple vaccinated, wore masks, applied social distancing and hygiene measures and did a RAT before visiting.
"Some people think of this as a pain, but most people think of this as a privilege to keep visiting," he said.
"I think people know how high risk hospitals and aged care are, and the last thing anyone would want would be to bring contagion back in."
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