Quiet sobs could be heard in Melbourne's coroner's court, as several families attended to finally hear from the pair who were the most senior managers when, throughout July and August 2020, almost a quarter of the 188 residents at St Basil's aged care home died from Covid-19 or neglect. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
Following multiple failed legal bids to avoid giving evidence after 50 residents died in the Victorian aged care home they managed, Konstantin Kontis and Vicky Kos were compelled to testify at a coronial inquest resuming on the sixth anniversary of the tragedy.
During his evidence on Friday, Kontis said that the board of St Basil's, operating under the auspice of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, never signed off on the facility's Covid-19 management policy and that he believed, as chair, he had the delegated authority to approve it without them.
Counsel assisting the coroner, Naomi Hodgson, told the court the policy contained no strong guidance on close contacts of Covid cases, and that the main guidance on symptoms was to follow the directives of the state and federal governments.
The policy document was not updated as new directives came in from the government, the court heard. Instead this information was printed and put into a yellow folder for staff to keep up-to-date with.
Kontis accepted under questioning that there was no delegation of authority that allowed him to approve "such a significant document" without input from the board.
Kontis was also questioned about why he did not convene board meetings as the outbreak grew, especially once testing of 116 residents and 95 staff on 15 July 2020 – as organised by the federal department of health – revealed 28 positive cases.
"My communication then had switched to the archbishop direct," Kontis said. "I don't want to put tickets on myself, but he had full confidence that I would handle the matter in the most appropriate way."
Hodgson put it to Kontis that regardless of whether an approved aged care provider was a not-for-profit, for-profit, or religiously run, the leadership had obligations under the aged care and corporate laws to inform the board. She suggested Kontis was wrong in some of his understanding of these obligations, which he accepted.
Kontis said a board meeting was held in April 2020 before the outbreak at the home and after Covid was spreading through aged care elsewhere. Discussions would have occurred then, he said, about what to do if a significant portion of the workforce became infected.
The court heard that no minutes from that meeting had been found in about 10,000 pages of briefing evidence provided to the coroner. It prompted the inquest – due to close its questioning of witnesses on Friday – to be delayed to allow St Basil's representatives to conduct a search.
Kontis' evidence is due to resume on 16 November.
The yellow folder
Earlier in the week, the court heard that no cohort plan for separating Covid positive residents from uninfected ones could be found in documents provided to the court. Kos, who was director of nursing and facility manager at the time, said this plan was placed in the yellow folder. Some documents from that folder had gone missing, she said.
She gave evidence that many documents from the state and federal government were being added to this folder, and that staff were expected to keep up-to-date with it when starting shifts. Information was also shared during handovers, she said.
Following this evidence, a search on Monday night of electronic and hard-file repositories of documents, including those previously seized by Victoria police, did not reveal such a cohort plan, the court heard on Tuesday from St Basil's barrister, Conor O'Bryan. O'Bryan said because some files had been lost it could not be proven that a cohort plan never existed.
During his evidence, Kontis was pressed on why he did not attend key meetings, organised by senior management of the home and attended by health officials, once it became clear the outbreak was significant and the entire workforce needed to be stood down. Kontis said he disagreed with a directive from the chief health officer at the time, Prof Brett Sutton, to furlough the entire workforce and replace them with agency staff to prevent further spread. Kontis said he did not trust the staff would be competent and Covid-free.
"You've just received the news that your entire staff is going to be stood down," Hodgson said. "Why didn't you attend [meetings] as the only person on the board with vision of what was happening here?"
Kontis responded: "I can't answer that. I didn't attend." He said he was informed about what happened at meetings immediately afterwards by attenders. Kontis said there were also some meetings he did not believe he was invited to.
Hodgson said that St Basil's, as an approved aged care provider, had a duty under law to implement policies and procedures to manage risk and ensure care for consumers.
Spiros Vasilakis' mother died at St Basil's during the outbreak and he has attended the inquest every day. "It still hurts for all of us families here," he says.