Tasmanian disability advocates are frustrated by the government's public reporting of COVID-19 deaths as being caused or connected to their "underlying medical conditions".
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The public have been told that some individuals who have recently died from the virus had "co-morbidities" or "underlying medical conditions", or were in palliative care.
This has raised ethical concerns and questions around whether governments are trying to absolve themselves from their failures to prioritise and protect the most vulnerable members of society, failures in the vaccine rollout, and management of COVID in residential facilties.
A health department spokesperson said it reported relevant information to the public about COVID-19 deaths.
"We are always very careful not to provide information that would identify a patient, however we provide relevant and factual information relating to deaths of people infected with COVID-19 to ensure the public is adequately informed."
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Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) director Kristen Desmond said a death from COVID-19 should be reported as a death from COVID-19.
"If it was COVID that brought their life to an end then we shouldn't be diminishing that by saying they had an underlying condition. Lots of people have underlying conditions that do not shorten their lives, and people with disabilities might well have been living a life to the fullest," Mrs Desmond said.
"It kind of downplays the life of that person, and in some ways is saying 'it's OK because they were more vulnerable, it's OK that they died'."
Mrs Desmond said it pointed to a wider social issue of inclusion, or discrimination against those with disabilities.
"I have a real problem with it. It shows a lack of inclusion in our society," she said.
"We should be judged by how we deal with our most vulnerable in situations of crisis, and what we are seeing is people in aged care or those who have disabilities are being left out, and this is then justified because a significant outcome for them, after catching COVID, is inevitable anyway."
Some argue that the reporting method may be viewed as a way of avoiding the government's mismanagement of COVID-19 and policy failures.
Tasmanian disability consultant Jane Wardlaw said people with disability would not be dying if COVID-19 was not in the community.
"The truth of the matter is if I die of COVID, I have died of COVID. I didn't die because I had muscular dystrophy, I died because I contracted COVID," Ms Wardlaw said.
"If you don't acknowledge the numbers of people with disability who are dying of COVID, and just saying they had underlying conditions, you are not being authentic to the Australian community ... And we need to have the facts when it comes to developing policy."
Ms Wardlaw said the government reporting of deaths in this way was an attempt to pass the buck of responsibility.
She said there were flaws in the way COVID-19 was managed by governments, including a slow rollout of vaccine, a failure to prioritise vaccination of those with disabilities, and a failure to manage support workforces as COVID entered the community.
"People with disability are dying with COVID and sometimes it is because we depend on a service system where we have workers coming to work who might have COVID, who can't access rapid antigen tests, who might not be fully vaccinated.
"And there is no appropriate information telling us how we can still be looked after, no policies and regulations put into place to protect those with disability so we don't die of COVID."
A Health Department spokesperson said residents and staff in aged care and disability care facilities had been prioritised since the start of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in Tasmania.
"COVID-19 vaccine mandates have also been in place for staff in these sectors to reduce the risk of transmission to residents," they said.
"All people aged 70 years and above and younger people with underlying health conditions, including those with a disability, were also prioritised from the outset with access to vaccination since March 2021."
The department spokesperson said residents and staff in aged care and disability care facilities had been prioritised since the start of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in Tasmania.
"COVID-19 vaccine mandates have also been in place for staff in these sectors to reduce the risk of transmission to residents," they said.
"All people aged 70 years and above and younger people with underlying health conditions, including those with a disability, were also prioritised from the outset with access to vaccination since March 2021."
