Victim’s daughter to give evidence at St Basil’s inquest

Christine Golding, the daughter of late resident Efraxia Tsalanidis, will be the first to give evidence at the inquest, which will hear from 60 witnesses including family, St Basil’s staff, heads of state and federal government departments, medical experts and outbreak managers.

Victoria’s chief health officer Prof Brett Sutton will give evidence on Nov 24.

However, the Professor whose official sign-off led to the standing down of the whole St Basil’s workforce was not listed in documents as the state’s CHO.

He was instead described as a Clinical Professor of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Alfred Hospital.

An earlier hearing was told a staff member working at the Fawkner retirement home returned a positive test on July 9, 2020, but colleagues were not told for four days.

While the Victorian department of health was notified, the Commonwealth did not receive the information until days later, causing a massive delay in bringing on a surge workforce.

Meanwhile, the virus rapidly spread through St Basil’s.

In a bid to stop the rise in cases, Prof Sutton and Dr Finn Romanes stood down the whole of St Basil’s staff.

Replacement agency nurses – the most experience having graduated just two years earlier – later reported going from “crisis to crisis”.

Infected residents were taken to hospital suffering dehydration and deconditioning, their families fearing that their lack of strength meant they were unable to fight off the virus.

Of the 117 residents who lived at St Basil’s, 50 died during Victoria’s second wave, with 45 of the deaths being attributed to Covid-19.