The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines into regional, rural and remote communities is an vital part of the Australian Government\u2019s vaccine strategy to protect country people and managing the fight against the virus in the regions.
\nThe Australian Government is working with Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services, General Practices, state and territory governments, Primary Health Networks, General Practitioner-led Respiratory Clinics and community pharmacies, to ensure that Australian\u2019s living in regional, rural and remote locations have access to a vaccination if they choose to.
\nTo further strengthen our rollout delivery across Australia, both GP’s and pharmacies have been invited to join the nation-wide effort to administer the COVID-19 vaccine. This will integrate more than 2,000 vaccine sites across Australia.
\nGP’s will join the rollout from phase 1B, with pharmacies to begin vaccine distribution from phase 2A.
\nThe Australian Government is committed to providing safe and effective vaccines free to everyone in Australia, no matter where they live.
\nMinister for Health, Greg Hunt said it is expected that there will be thousands of sites that will support the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations in Australia.
\n\u201cWe already have several agreements for the supply of approximately 140 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, including those produced by Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Novavax,\u201d Minister Hunt said.
\n\u201cAccess to vaccines approved for use in Australia by the Therapeutic Goods Administration has been prioritised, ensuring those at greatest risk are vaccinated first.\u201d
\n\u201cWe are working hard to ensure site readiness including specific handling requirements and sufficient cold chain capacity in locations that will be handling frozen vaccines.\u201d
\n\u201cThis includes undertaking detailed implementation planning with peak bodies, jurisdictions and vaccination providers to ensure access to doses and to minimise wastage,\u201d Minister Hunt said.
\nThe Government has worked extensively with Pfizer and AstraZeneca and our logistics providers, DHL and Linfox, to ensure that either vaccine can be safely delivered throughout Australia.
\nMinister for Rural Health, Mark Coulton said Australia\u2019s world class primary health workforce would be critical to the success of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout across the nation.
\n\u201cThe rural health workforce \u2013 including doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists and allied health professionals \u2013 have continually risen to the challenges of COVID-19 over the past year and will play a pivotal role in support the rollout of vaccines across regional Australia,\u201d Minister Coulton said.
\n\u201cI have held regular discussions with rural health stakeholders to ensure the impacts of COVID-19 are specifically considered in a rural context. The sector have provided valuable insights and considerations to the vaccine rollout and distribution across regional Australia.
\n\u201cOur comprehensive response to the pandemic, including the establishment of GP Respiratory Clinics, developing a remote retrieval strategy and extending telehealth to protect regional Australians have been extremely successful in containing the virus.
\n\u201cWhile cases of the virus have remained low in rural areas, the rollout of the vaccine is the next key aspect of our plan to keep our communities safe.\u201d
\nMinister for Indigenous Australian, Ken Wyatt said the rollout of the vaccine program to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people throughout Australia, particularly in remote communities would be a sizeable undertaking.
\n\u201cFor this reason we will continue to listen to the advice and expertise of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Group on COVID-19, which has informed all aspects of the COVID-19 response since early March 2020,\u201d Minister Wyatt said.
\nThe Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have an increased risk of acquiring and developing serious outcomes from communicable diseases due to multiple factors, including social determinants of health.\u201d
\nThe Australian Government\u2019s COVID-19 vaccine strategy is available at health.gov.au<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines into regional, rural and remote communities is an vital part of the Australian Government\u2019s vaccine strategy to protect country people and managing the fight against the virus in the regions. The Australian Government is working with Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services, General Practices, state and territory governments, Primary Health Networks, … Continue reading “COVID-19 vaccine rollout for regional, rural and remote Australians”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}