Public health and communications experts are using Victoria’s lockdown to ramp up pressure on the federal government to improve its failing $40 million vaccine advertising campaign, as private companies such as Qantas take matters into their own hands and offer incentives to vaccinated people.

Dire vaccine uptake nationally means that just 1.9 per cent of Australian adults are fully vaccinated, compared to almost half in the US, which the Victorian government says is a big factor in the state’s current seven day lockdown.