Aged care regulator took four days to tell Australian government of St Basil's Covid-19 outbreak

The aged care regulator has been accused of a “catastrophic communications failure” causing a “potentially deadly delay” after it was revealed it took four days to inform the federal government about a Covid-19 case at Melbourne’s St Basil’s aged care home.

The aged care quality and safety commissioner, Janet Anderson, wrote to the Senate committee on Covid-19 on Friday to clarify that the commission had learned on 10 July that a staff member had tested positive on 8 July.

Last week the health department secretary, Prof Brendan Murphy, told the committee the department had first learned of the case on 14 July. Anderson had previously said she was personally not aware of the St Basil’s case until the same day.

At least 20 deaths and 163 infections have been associated with the St Basil’s outbreak.

Related: A foreseeable catastrophe: how Covid-19 swept through Victoria’s nursing homes

The delay was revealed on Monday morning as the quality and safety commission and the health department were also admonished during a hearing of the aged care royal commission for failing to prepare a Covid-19 response plan for the aged care sector.

The outbreak led to all the staff at St Basil’s being stood down and replaced with a surge workforce, after the federal government intervened.

“The regulatory official from the commission who made the assessment contact referred the service’s responses to the commission’s Covid-19 response team and this information was escalated internally and recorded in the commission’s daily Covid-19 confirmed case tracker,” Anderson wrote.

“The commission did not escalate the matter externally at the time because the St Basil’s representative had confirmed in the interview that they had advised the [public health unit] of the outbreak,” Anderson said.

Labor’s aged care spokeswoman, Julie Collins, called the four-day delay a “catastrophic communications failure”, and said it “led to a potentially deadly delay in responding to the outbreak”.

“Time and time again the Morrison government has been warned about information sharing failures between its regulator and the Department of Health but has not acted.

“We are now seeing the tragic and avoidable consequences of not properly heeding these warnings,” she said.

Collins called on the aged care minister, Richard Colbeck, to “reveal today when he became aware the regulator did have knowledge of the outbreak of Covid-19 at St Basil’s but failed to pass it on”.

At a media conference on Monday, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said he was “concerned about that breakdown in the communications”.

He and Colbeck were “undertaking further inquiries” about the situation, but the government was not privy to all of the commission’s information as “they’re an independent statutory office”.