The events of the pandemic will be brought back into sharp focus when an inquest examining 50 deaths at a Melbourne aged care home resumes after a four-and-a-half-year-long hiatus.
Since 2020, loved ones of those who perished at St Basil’s Home for the Aged have been demanding answers from those in charge when a fatal COVID-19 outbreak occurred.
Today, a court heard, the wait will only last a few more months.
St Basil’s managers Kon Kontis and Vicky Kos were the final two witnesses listed to give evidence at the inquest, which had previously heard about disastrous failures at the Fawkner centre.
Former St Basil’s Home for the Aged chairman Kon Kontis leaves the Coroner’s Court on December 15, 2021. (ABC News: Kristian Silva)
In late 2021, Mr Kontis and Ms Kos refused to testify at the inquest due to fears of self-incrimination.
Eventually Victoria’s highest court ordered that they needed to.
However the coronial inquest was hit with further delays, because Worksafe prosecuted St Basil’s in a separate case over unsafe working conditions. The centre pleaded guilty and was fined $150,000 by the County Court this year.
On Thursday, the scale of the tragedy was highlighted when those in court stood for more than a minute as an interpreter read the names of each person who died at St Basil’s, many from the local Greek community.
Coroner Liberty Sanger said the inquest would resume in the week of August 3, with Mr Kontis and Ms Kos to be questioned in the witness box.
Once their evidence is complete, final legal submissions will be made before the coroner delivers findings.
Ms Sanger, who is overseeing the case after the retirement of former state coroner John Cain, acknowledged the legal delays and the trauma it had caused grieving families.
Spiros Vasilakis, whose mother Maria died in 2020, said the inquest into resident deaths at St Basil’s Home for the Aged had been a long time coming. (ABC News: Scott Jewell)
Outside court, Spiros Vasilakis, whose mother Maria died, said the inquest’s resumption had been a long time coming.
Specifically, he said, families wanted to hear from Mr Kontis and Ms Kos about what went wrong.
“They’ve been compelled to give evidence, and it’s the right thing that had to happen because at the end of the day, these two people ran the place during that chaotic period,” he said.
“They’re not going to escape public scrutiny, and that’s at least what I hope comes out of this.”
Nearly six years on from his mother’s death, Mr Vasilakis said it had been difficult to move on.
“I don’t think you can really ever get closure on someone you lost before their time,”
he said.
