{"id":501011,"date":"2026-02-24T13:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T13:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/501011\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T13:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T13:14:14","slug":"wa-government-announces-140m-plan-to-prevent-repeat-of-record-breaking-flu-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/501011\/","title":{"rendered":"WA government announces $140m plan to prevent repeat of record-breaking flu season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Creating more hospital beds and boosting immunisation will be key features of a $140 million “winter strategy” aimed at avoiding a repeat of WA’s worst-ever flu season.<\/p>\n

Premier Roger Cook said the funding would strengthen resilience across the state’s besieged health system and reduce pressure on emergency departments, which are among the most stretched in the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Cook said authorities were eager to prevent a repeat of the 2025 winter, which he described as “one of the toughest on record”, with 30,000 influenza cases making it the worst-ever flu season in WA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The severe flu season was partly blamed for ambulance ramping and elective surgery delays, which have dogged the government in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Increasing capacity<\/p>\n

WA Health Minister Meredith Hammat said the $140 million spend was on top of existing hospital funding and would include $61 million to increase the number of hospital beds across the state.<\/p>\n

\"Meredith<\/p>\n

Meredith Hammat says the government has invested $140 million on top of existing hospital funding. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)<\/p>\n

Ms Hammat said the extra bed capacity would be achieved by allowing private beds to be contracted by the government during periods of \u201cextreme demand\u201d.<\/p>\n

Almost 200 beds will also become available at St John of God Mt Lawley Hospital, which will become a public hospital on August 31, as the government finalises its purchase of the facility<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said beds at the hospital would also be made available to public patients in the interim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The WA government has almost finalised the purchase of St John of God Mt Lawley Hospital.\u00a0 (ABC News: West Matteeussen)<\/p>\n

Ms Hammat said $24.5 million would be committed to the national Time To Think program, which aimed to reduce the number of older patients who remained in hospital despite being medically discharged.<\/p>\n

WA records worst-ever flu season amid poor vaccination rates<\/a><\/p>\n

Western Australia records its worst flu season on record, with more than 30,000 influenza cases reported this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the number of older West Australians who have been cleared for discharge but remain in hospital because they can\u2019t access appropriate care continues to grow,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There was also a commitment of $20 million to pilot a new service to provide 24\/7 monitoring for elderly patients.<\/p>\n

This would include oversight by clinical and medical staff to look for ways to provide support in settings outside of hospital.<\/p>\n

Overflow ward likened to ‘dungeon’<\/p>\n

Katrina Carnicelli supported any move to boost the number of beds in hospitals after she said her mother Jill was forced to spend two “scary” days alongside drug-affected patients in an overflow ward at Royal Perth Hospital that nurses referred to as “the dungeon”.<\/p>\n

\"Katrina<\/p>\n

Katrina’s mother Jill spent two days in an overflow ward at Royal Perth Hospital after a scan revealed she had a brain tumour.\u00a0 (ABC News: Courtney Withers)<\/p>\n

She said her mother was experiencing double vision, memory loss, had stopped eating and was shaky on her feet after a scan found she had a brain tumour.<\/p>\n

Despite this, Ms Carnicelli said they had to wait for a neurology bed to become available at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, where she was finally admitted last night.<\/p>\n

“I was ringing private hospitals, neurosurgeons. There were no beds anywhere \u2026 we were stuck,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Hammat said she would look into the case, and had not heard the dungeon reference before.<\/p>\n

“I’m very sorry to hear of the circumstances that you referred to, and we have asked for some more information to understand exactly those circumstances,” she said.<\/p>\n

Shadow Health Minister Libby Mettam described the case as “completely unacceptable” and said the state government was “playing catch up” after underinvesting in the health system.<\/p>\n

\"Libby<\/p>\n

Shadow Health Minister Libby Mettam says the government is playing a desperate game of catch up.\u00a0 (ABC News: Courtney Withers)<\/p>\n

“We support any new resourcing in our hospital system but we are hearing more of the same when it comes to [hospitals] facing capacity issues,” Ms Mettam said.<\/p>\n

“WA is the wealthiest state in the nation, this shouldn’t be happening.”<\/p>\n

Boosting vaccination<\/p>\n

Low vaccination rates in WA were also blamed for the state\u2019s horror 2025 flu season.<\/p>\n

Off the back of last week\u2019s announcement to provide free respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines to aged care patients<\/a>, $14 million was also set aside as part of the winter strategy to improve vaccine uptake across the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This would include funding for targeted immunisations for vulnerable groups and providing the flu mist vaccine for children aged two to 11.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The strategy will include targeted immunisation porgrams. (ABC News: Michael Lloyd)<\/p>\n

Premier Roger Cook said the winter strategy was designed to “strengthen resilience across the health system” to avoid last year’s chaos.<\/p>\n

“Illnesses such as RSV and influenza have a real impact on West Australians and it directly affects availability of hospital beds,” he said.<\/p>\n

Australian Medical Association WA president Kyle Hoath welcomed the winter strategy announcement but warned there was still more work to be done.<\/p>\n

Dr Hoath said the plan should mean WA fared better than last year but said Australia could potentially be in for a shock after “a pretty brutal winter” in the northern hemisphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said getting people out of hospital and into aged care could be a decider in how the winter period impacted hospitals across the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Creating more hospital beds and boosting immunisation will be key features of a $140 million “winter strategy” aimed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[251961,251963,251962,154,251959,43,251960,62397,44,46,57934,41,39,42,40,25962,143,130500,251957,251958],"class_list":{"0":"post-501011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-cold-remedies","9":"tag-flu-cases-older-australians","10":"tag-flu-remedies","11":"tag-flu-vaccine","12":"tag-flu-vaccines","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-is-wa-flu-season-worse-this-year","15":"tag-meredith-hammat","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-perth","18":"tag-roger-cook","19":"tag-top-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topnews","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-wa","24":"tag-wa-flu-cases","25":"tag-wa-flu-season","26":"tag-wa-influenza","27":"tag-where-can-i-get-flu-vaccine-perth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}