How Covid vaccination clinics at SA schools will work

Pro-vax students will be able to get secret Covid jabs at pop-up school clinics when they start in SA. Here’s everything we know so far.

Students aged 16 or 17 can get a Covid-19 vaccination at their school pop-up clinic without parental permission – but only if they do so outside school hours.

Pop-up hubs are being set up at more than 20 schools, the state government has announced. The Education Department will allow any student 12 and over with parental consent, and any aged 18 or older, to be jabbed in school hours at the SA Health-run clinics.

But, under state laws, anyone 16 years and older can consent to their own medical treatment.

Therefore, if they are 16 or 17 and ask for a vaccination in their own right, it would be done outside teaching hours.

Schools would not know about the vaccination and therefore could not notify parents, a government spokesman said.

The pop-up clinics are due to start operating from October 25. Exact opening hours will be decided and announced site by site.

Clinics will run after school hours, when parents can also get jabbed, and on Saturdays when students from other schools and the broader community can attend.

Each school will work out timetables for when those students and staff being vaccinated during regular hours will have access to the clinic.

Consent forms are being drafted and will be provided to public, independent and Catholic schools.

Schools will not actively promote vaccinations but will facilitate the clinics and tell parents they are available, the department spokesman said.

Chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier has written an open letter to parents stressing that vaccinations are safe and the “best way to protect you, your family and your friends from getting sick”.

“The Delta Covid-19 strain is twice as infectious as the original strain and there are now more cases in children and young people,” she said.

SA Health teams will run two rounds at each clinic, spread three weeks apart to administer the first and second doses of Pfizer vaccine.

SA Health has launched a survey aimed at 12 to 25-year-olds to get a better understanding of whether young people are concerned about the disease or the vaccination, their preferences for clinic sites and their sources of information.

No specific targets have been set but the program has been established to address the low rates of vaccination among teenagers. As at October 12, in SA only 5.2 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 were double vaccinated, and 29.4 per cent had one dose. Nationally, those percentages were 13.6 and 54.5.

The leading jurisdictions were NSW on 23.3 per cent double vaccinated and ACT on 90 per cent for first doses.

Health Minister Stephen Wade said as well as overall statewide targets it was crucial to ensure “strong vaccination rates across geographical and cultural cohorts across the state”.