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Disability service workers urgently need more support from state and federal governments as COVID-19 has caused severe staffing shortages, according to union officials and the industry’s peak body.

Large swathes of the disability service sector have been forced into Covid isolation, leaving some clients without access to vital services, while a major provider has only been able to source seven rapid antigen tests for its entire workforce in one state.

On 30 December, a senior psychiatrist tweeted out her frustration at mismanagement of the COVID pandemic in Australia using the “#LetItRip” hashtag.  “Australia is a failing nation state with no leadership, accountability, provision of basic services or public health. Any wonder we are disillusioned,” said Professor Louise Newman, a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Staff shortages in the disability sector in Australia have gone from bad to worse due to a dearth of rapid antigen test kits and long queues at COVID-19 PCR testing sites.

But Ms Gibbs feels those with disability have been forgotten by state and federal governments as Australia reopens. “I can take all the personal responsibility in the world but if I need to go and do an essential thing like go to the supermarket, other people’s actions have a direct impact on it,” she said. “We are being made to ask enormous, difficult decisions so that other people can go to the pub … and so other people don’t have to wear a mask.”