Continued attempts by Labor to play pandemic politics are irresponsible and undermine community confidence.
The COVID@home program is a key element of our health system preparedness and is being staffed appropriately.
Critical COVID@home positions have already been filled with existing health staff being reallocated from the vaccination program and quarantine.
Over 850 additional FTE have been recruited to our health system since July last year to respond to COVID-19 and are directed to the area of greatest need, including COVID@home from December 15.
The current recruitment campaign has been planned to provide additional staff in line with anticipated growth in cases in the new year. This will allow the program to be scalable and agile.
To suggest we are not prepared is simply untrue as Ms Dow knows, having attended a health preparedness briefing in recent weeks for Opposition members.
Rather than criticise, Labor should be commending staff in our vaccination and testing centres and across the health system who have worked tirelessly to protect and support Tasmanians over the past 20 months.
Tasmania’s health system stands ready for a safe reopening of our borders on 15 December and, with just over 2 weeks until we reopen our borders, it’s time that Labor drops their deliberate scaremongering and starts encouraging Tasmanians to get vaccinated.