Prime Minister Scott Morrison has signalled mass COVID-19 vaccinations hubs are on the agenda as part of a bid to increase the rate at which Australians are getting the shots.
The hubs would be put in place in an attempt to roll out more jabs under Australia’s troubled immunisation program.
“I will be talking and working with the states to look at the options for mass vaccination,” he said on Wednesday in Western Australia.
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He said this would be “firstly in the instance of those aged between 50 -70 and the AstraZeneca vaccines that we have available”.
Morrison suggested the mass vaccination sites could be an option in June or July, adding he’d spoken to at least one premier about the issue.
“We have a strong GP network of 4000 to work the vaccines through. Equally there’s an option to work - and I’ve discussed this with at least one premier - about how mass vaccination could be an option earlier, say in June or July, for those over-50 groups that are in the balance of the population,” he said.
“It’s a large number and there will be vaccines, we believe, to get that happening.”
The suggestion of vaccination hubs comes after Morrison announced he was to meet with state and territory leaders twice a week in an effort to get the derailed vaccination plan back on track.
The federal government has been hit with a backlash over the decision to dump the rollout timeline after falling short of initial targets.
“Our goal right here, right now, is to ensure that we continue to progress forward with vaccinating that most vulnerable population,” Morrison told reporters.
Morrison attributed the delays to three million doses failing to arrive from Europe as well as the revised medical advice for people under 50 to avoid the AstraZeneca jab.
“I have called together the premiers and chief ministers for us to work together to deal with the problems we have in the vaccination program which stem from two issues,” he said.
“The first one was the constraint in the supply from overseas for our doses of those imported vaccines.
“We had three million that were supposed to turn up in those first few weeks and because of the problems in Europe, they did not arrive.
“We were getting over the top of that problem and the second issue that has come from outside the government’s control is the medical advice regarding those remote risks associated with AstraZeneca.”
- with AAP