Residents in Melbourne’s north and west will benefit from additional vaccines and a rapid expansion of vaccination sites across the region as part of a three-week vaccination blitz.
Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt said the Commonwealth would inject more than 417,000 doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to Victoria in September.
The surge will consist of:
- More than 127,600 additional Pfizer doses will be delivered by the last week of September to 532 Victorian GPs, increasing their vaccine allocation from 600 doses a fortnight to 900 doses a fortnight.
- More than 108,700 additional Pfizer doses will be delivered to the Victorian Government as part of Operation COVID Shield.
- An additional 180,700 Moderna doses will be delivered to Victorian pharmacies over the next two weeks. This is in addition to 119,510 Moderna vaccines that were already scheduled for Victorian pharmacies this month.
- This is in addition to uncapped allocations of AstraZeneca available to Victorian GP’s, pharmacies and the state government.
Minister Hunt said the rapid increase in vaccine supplies would be essential to ensuring that Victorians in the hotspot LGA’s were protected from COVID-19.
“The Government is making sure that getting a COVID-19 vaccine is accessible for everyone,” Mr Hunt said.
“It’s the most important protection we have against COVID-19, I urge all Victorians and all Australians to go and get vaccinated.
“Vaccines are our road out of COVID and that is why the National COVID Vaccine Taskforce has worked closely with the Victorian government to increase the numbers of primary care sites and allocations of Pfizer to those sites.”
A rapid rollout of the Moderna vaccine to participating pharmacies is planned to commence from the week of 20 September, with more than 3,600 community pharmacies able to administer the Moderna vaccine by the end of the month across Australia – this includes more than 700 in Victoria.
“This provides more opportunities for Australians to get vaccinated and is a great opportunity for families in particular, who will now be able to walk into their community pharmacy and have all family members aged 12 and over vaccinated,” Minister Hunt said.
Today, over 1,800 community pharmacies will be notified of their participation in the Moderna mRNA vaccine roll-out and invited to order to receive deliveries of the vaccine on the week of 20 September. More than 230 of these will be in the most affected areas of Melbourne, the Minister said.
This will be followed by a second group of approximately 1,800 pharmacies shortly after, he said.
