Revealed: SA’s plan to reopen borders to Covid-19 high-case states as new hurdle emerges
There’s a clear risk emerging to the state hitting its 80 per cent vaccination targets and enjoying greater freedom and interstate travel.
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A lack of staff to administer Covid-19 vaccinations in the regional areas is emerging as a major hurdle in the state’s bid for greater freedom and interstate travel.
Premier Steven Marshall has said South Australia would reopen for business when 80 per cent of people aged 16 and over were fully vaccinated but there must also be “equity” in rates across districts.
Data on vaccination rates for people aged 15 and over shows that on current trends, Grant Council in the South-East will not reach the 80 per cent mark until November 2022.
But recent changes making anyone over 12 eligible for Pfizer, and state government moves to speed up the rollout in regions with low rates, could significantly increase the take-up.
Grant, which surrounds the district of Mt Gambier, has the country’s poorest take-up with just 9 per cent having received two jabs, and 18 per cent with one dose.
Other areas with low jab rates are in Peterborough (29 per cent), Playford in Adelaide’s north (31 per cent) and Adelaide Plains (32 per cent).
Mt Gambier doctor Richard Try said his service was offering evening and weekend appointments to speed up the rollout.
The clinic’s supply of Pfizer tripled two weeks ago, he said, and it received up to 600 calls a day from people wanting to book in for the jab.
But a lack of resources had taken over from supply constraints as the main hurdle to getting jabs in arms, Dr Try said, with few clinics in town offering Pfizer vaccinations.
“The biggest problem we have is not the vaccines coming in but how do we get them out again in terms of doctor availability, without compromising our normal work,” he said. “We need more people down here able to give the vaccine.”
Rural Doctors Association SA chairman Peter Rischbieth (pictured) said that trend was reflected in other regions.
“We’re already short of workforce nurses in our hospitals and general practices, and then we have to have extra nurses vaccinating,” he said.
Dr Rischbieth said pop-up clinics in areas with low vaccination rates could help, and staff could be assisted by luring retired health professionals back to work, with back-up from nursing students.
Grant Mayor Richard Sage said low vaccination rates may be due to the older population waiting for new vaccines to become available, and previous difficulties getting appointments.
“We’ve got no doctors’ clinics out in the regional areas around Mt Gambier,” Mr Sage said.
“It wasn’t until the local chemist started to make it (AstraZeneca) available that people started to roll up their sleeve.”
The state government is yet to reveal how its required equity in vaccination rates across SA will be measured and what benchmarks regions must meet to trigger easing of border controls and social distancing restrictions.
Mr Marshall on Friday said the government was expanding regional vaccination sites and exploring other strategies to accelerate the rollout.
SA Health said: “We continue to monitor capacity and supply according to community demand.”
When SA plans to open gates to high-case states
Authorities are planning to start a staged reopening of South Australia’s borders from mid-November, when latest modelling predicts the state will reach an 80 per cent Covid double-dose vaccination rate.
It is understood the first stage would involve admitting fully vaccinated people from low-risk local government areas in NSW and Victoria.
But the border concessions will not start immediately after the 80 per cent inoculation threshold for people aged 16 and over is reached, because health authorities are monitoring disparate vaccination rates across areas within SA.
It is believed Premier Steven Marshall also has been advised to consider slightly delaying the reopening if people are clamouring for vaccinations even when the rate reaches 80 per cent.
Mr Marshall said the state was still “fully committed” to achieving the end of statewide lockdowns before Christmas, while Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas urged the Premier to be frank about the reopening roadmap’s impact on a “health system already in crisis”.
Mr Marshall is preparing to explain the rationale behind the reopening in a bid to continue the “social contract” thought to be essential to maintaining public co-operation with reasonable restrictions and guidelines.
Numerous areas of Sydney have reached double-dose rates of between 70 and 79 per cent, while the ACT is a single local government area so any reopening likely would be determined by its overall case rate.
Plans to oversee the entry of fully inoculated people are not known, although Mr Marshall repeatedly has spelled out the intention for vaccination passports to be included in the mySA GOV app used for QR code check-ins.
There also is potential to adopt the G2G Pass system used by Western Australia and Tasmania, which allows the uploading of a vaccination passport, driver’s licence and other credentials when applying for a digital entry permit to those states. Plans for later stages of the state’s reopening also are not known, although these are likely to be politically sensitive given the next state election is scheduled for March 19.
Frontline doctors, nurses and ambulance groups on Friday urged a boost to healthcare capacity before borders opened to the “inevitable” surge in Covid-19 cases, regardless of vaccination targets.
Australia surpassed a 50 per cent double vaccinated rate on Friday, when figures showed almost 75 per cent nationally had received a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
In SA, 47.1 per cent of people aged 16 and over are fully vaccinated and 65.6 per cent have had a single dose. Mr Marshall said it was critical for South Australians to get vaccinated to “ensure we protect ourselves and others”.
Mr Malinauskas said the government clearly was concerned SA’s health system – already buckling under pressure of current demand and plagued by “chronic ramping and overcrowding” – would be unable to cope with an influx of Covid-19.
“We all want life to return to normal as quickly as possible, but it is clear the perilous state of our health system under Steven Marshall is posing a risk to our pathway out of this pandemic,” he said.
The expected mid-November 80 per cent vaccination threshold demonstrates an acceleration of the rollout since mid-August, when chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier told The Advertiser “hideous” lockdowns and border closures could end by Christmas when SA likely hit the 80 per cent target.
Mr Marshall, on September 16, declared border restrictions would not ease the day SA hit 80 per cent, because of the need to “get some equity” across “real pockets (of the state) where there is a lack of balance” in inoculation rates.
From October 11, essential travellers from Victoria, NSW and the ACT must have had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine to be permitted to enter SA, while that mandate applies to commercial transport and freight workers arriving by road from October 7.
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