VICTORIA’S Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has been slammed after admitting she rejected health advice that recommended more mask mandates across the state.
It comes as the 12-week immunity period that exempted people from isolating or testing if they recently had COVID was reduced to four weeks in Victoria.
After locking Victorians down for more than 260 days on the basis of such health advice, Ms Thomas on Tuesday acknowledged that the government would not follow that same recommendation.
But she refused to say at a media conference whether that was in recognition of the upcoming November state election.
It’s understood that Acting chief health officer, Professor Ben Cowie, wanted mask mandates to be re-implemented in schools and early childhood centres, as well as in some hospitality and retail settings.
But Ms Thomas stopped short of mandating them and instead strongly recommended masks in indoor and crowded settings.
“I made a decision based on the advice that I had received that further mandating of masks was not the most effective way to get the message out about the importance of mask-wearing,” she said.
“We need to empower Victorians to make their own decisions.”
Ms Thomas also requested that employers consider working from home arrangements that are “most appropriate for their workplace and employees based on individual requirements”.
The head of the Australian Medical Association blasted the State Government’s decision to ignore health advice.
Victorian president Dr Roderick McRae said “too much weight” had been put on the input of the business community, who have long warned that extra restrictions would cripple the sector.
“Clearly there’s a new minister and we have our political leaders there to weigh up all the inputs. All I can do is repeat until I go blue in the face — the emphasis from business is receiving too much weight,” he said.
“It’s courageous to ignore accurate, precise medical advice in the middle of a global pandemic that continues to kill people.
“We’re three years down the road, we’ve learnt nothing and we’re in a worse position. We cannot wish this away.”
Dr McRae said objective evidence continues to show that when mask mandates were in place, morbidity and mortality of COVID, and overwhelm on the wider health system, was “not as bad as it is today”.
“We understand that all Victorians know the right thing to do, but it appears very few are actually doing the right thing. It appears to be a community wide peer group pressure based complacency and wilful denial of what’s going on,” he added.
“It’s very easy to see that there’s some political expediency at play here, because we understand Victorians had a difficult time with lockdowns.”
Dr McRae predicted it was “extremely likely” that the health minister will have no choice but to cut elective surgeries.
“Things are very bad. The only tool we have left in the toolbox is to do no elective surgery,” he added.
Meanwhile, Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra welcomed the approach of mask recommendations rather than mandates.
“This puts the decision making back on the individual and businesses,” he said.
“We have advocated that mandates should be avoided. This is a common-sense approach which enables people to make their own decisions to protect their health, the health of their clients and their family and friends.
It comes as Victoria recorded 11,283 new COVID-19 cases and a further 20 deaths yesterday, with hospitalisation rates continuing to rise.
There are 771 people in hospital with the virus, up almost 200 over the past week.
Thirty-four COVID-infected people are in intensive care, with nine on a ventilator.
COVID-19 hospitalisations in Victoria peaked at 1229 in mid-January during the original Omicron wave.
