MEDICAL clinics around suburban Canberra have begun to embrace the rollout of vaccines to protect against further coronavirus outbreaks.
After the public reportedly overwhelmed the phones of doctors in recent days to check on the availability of Pfizer and AstraZeneca doses, 18 general practitioners administered the first jabs to eager patients on Monday morning (March 22).
A further 25 GPs in the territory are expected to be able to administer vaccines to prevent COVID-19 over the coming weeks, according to ACT Health.
The roll out of phase 1B of AstraZeneca vaccines will be eligible to people over 70 years of age, Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders over 55 and others with “underlying medical conditions”, including those with a disability, from today.
ACT Minister for Health Rachel Stephen-Smith did admit doctor numbers could well depend on the uncertainty of vaccine supplies.
A shipment of 250,000 vaccines scheduled from Europe for Australia earlier in the month were halted from leaving the Italian shores after its government pleaded a case to retain the batch due to a growing number of ongoing cases.
A lift in onshore manufacturing of the AstraZeneca since is hoping to make up for shortfalls in Australia’s supplies.
“The advice I had was the small number of additional (GPs) not next week, but the week after or the week after that were supposed to be slightly higher number – say 20 or 25 additionals,” Ms Stephen-Smith told ABC Canberra this morning.
“But the numbers do change as the Commonwealth has these conversations with individual practices when they register.”
Ms Stephen-Smith has also promised to “double the number of Pfizer doses that we are expecting for this week”, which is more than 4000 doses, to be administered this week to fill a need for greater demand.
The introduction of doctors surgeries to manage the increase in COVID-19 vaccine case loads will ease the burden of the Garran COVID-19 Surge Centre, near Canberra Hospital.
“We’re maintaining a relatively slow rollout of the AstraZeneca at our ACT government hub at Garran,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
“As we start to see those domestic reproduced AstraZenca come online, then we will start to see more ramp up of the AstraZeneca from the government perspective.”
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