Inside Brisbane’s mass vaccination hub
Brisbane’s mass vaccination hub is delivering up to 4300 doses of Pfizer each day - and this is the amazing way they’re doing it.
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THEY come by car. By bus. By bike. By skateboard. In Business suits. In lycra. In work shirts and stubbies. In floral dresses and knee high boots. In school uniforms.
The skateboarder in a T Shirt that says Punk is Dead in red, ragged letters. They come holding phones to their ears and coffee in their hands. They come pushing prams. Swinging Briefcases. They are young,old and every age in between.
And they are all here, in this shuffling line of humanity outside the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCEC) in South Brisbane for one reason. To get the jab. The needle. The Covid-19 vaccination. The promise of a different tomorrow, one that looks like the yesterday we are all longing for.
Every person in this line is about to become part of what is now the largest, co-ordinated, free, mass vaccination programme in global history.
This particular hub, officially known as the South Bank Community Vaccination Location has (at the time of writing) administered more than 50,000 Pfizer doses since August 11 this year. When it first opened, it was averaging about 1500 doses a day, now its average is between 3800 and 4300 daily.
To achieve this, the hub’s 100 staff move visitors between each step of the process; from the greeters who sit at long tables outside the BCEC’s Exhibition Hall Four, registering each arrival’s details, to volunteers who pass out bottles of water once they climb the stairs to the first station inside the hall.
Here, visitors move through a queuing area (which looks exactly like airport check in lines from back in the day) to have their Medicare details registered.
Once this is done, they are directed to one of the 80 pop-up pods to where they will receive the vaccine by a registered nurse.
After it’s done, everyone waits beneath the sprawling grey arches of the Hall for 15 minutes, sitting on socially distanced chairs, while more staff check in on them.
Every person wears a sticker that has a number on it, as well as a time they are allowed to leave. So it might say 1136, 09.15am, and if it all sounds terribly dystopian, it is - except for one factor.
The staff here (seconded from the Metro South Hospital and Health Service, the Queensland Children’s and Mater Hospitals, the Queensland Police Service, security personnel, along with paramedics, pharmacist and members of so-called “Care Army” volunteers) make every step of this rather disconcerting process a human one.
“How are you darling?”, the red vested volunteers say to children waiting in line with their parents.
“Are you feeling okay?” they ask nervous visitors outside the pods, “Would you like a Mentos or a water?”, they offer people waiting in lines.
As one volunteer says to QWeekend; “I’m very aware that every arm we jab has a whole person with their own story attached to it”.
Q Weekend spent a morning at the South Bank hub to hear some of the stories behind the round, orange stickers each visitoris given as they leave the BCEC.
It says “I’ve had the Covid-19 Vaccination” with a blue tick on it. More often than not,the volunteers have also added a hand written note on each sticker.
The one QWeekend receives says: “Thank you, you are amazing”.
THE BOSS
Anita Lahey, 40
Site Manager, South Bank Community Vaccination Location
We open at 7.20am and we administer our last vaccine at about 6.20pm. In between, I’m in charge of making sure that the flow is steady, and everyone who comes here has a good experience.
I came here from Metro South Outpatient Audit Team to do this job and it’s been really wonderful. When you have a site like this, a big part is streamlining the process.
How do we make the flow as quick as possible? How do we help calm nervous arrivals? What works for visitors in line? How many bottles of water do we need? How do we train every single person who works here to knowledgeably answer questions visitors may have about the vaccination.
How long does it take (usually between 30 minutes to one hour)? How do we talk to someone with a needle phobia? What about people who have a language barrier? These are all questions we ask ourselves every day, and we are constantly improving and streamlining the process.
One thing I didn’t expect when I took on this role was how excited and grateful most people who come here are to be given the vaccination. Because they really are.
People say thank you to our staff all the time, or say how lucky they feel to be here. People share their stories with us all the time, why they are choosing to be vaccinated, how they feel about the pandemic, how it’s affected them personally. But overwhelmingly, people tell us how they just want to do their bit to get us all back to normal. It’s really heartening to hear that people aren’t just doing this for themselves, they’re doing it for everyone else too.
I love my job, I love coming to work every day, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as much a part of a team before, and I mean that as part of my own work team, but also a part of this great big team of the public coming together for the good of all. I find it incredibly heartening, actually.
THE STUDENT
Gemma Thomas, 17
Brisbane North
I’m here mostly because I don’t want all the other, younger students after us to have to go through the couple of years we have in this cohort. I would really love the younger ones to just have a normal life, a normal senior year, you know, for them just to be free and feel like the whole world is open to them.
For me, Covid hasn’t affected me too badly, and my mental health is good. But Year 12 still hasn’t been what I expected. All through your school years you have this idea about what your senior year is going to be like, and ours hasn’t been like that at all.
My school (St Rita’s, Clayfield) has been excellent, and the teachers have given us so much support, but online learning is still really different to being in a class with your friends, and it’s hard to get motivated for your final, external exams when you are not with your teachers and cohort.
Covid has shifted things for young people. I was thinking of taking a gap year next year, travelling and working but I know that’s not possible. I’m hoping to study sonography next year and I hope I’ll get to attend lectures and meet some of my cohort. I am feeling optimistic about the future but I think we all have to do our part. That’s why I’m here, I just really, really want to do my bit. I feel really good about being here today; it’s the one thing that I feel like I can contribute.
I have an older sister who finished school last year and her year was really interrupted by this, and I have a younger brother also. I hope by the time he finishes school, he has a really great year.
My overwhelming feeling now that I have had my first shot here is one of relief. I’m surprised at just how relieved I do feel. And just really happy that I’ve done my bit. It’s free too, which is great for students.
THE TOW TRUCK DRIVER
Ken Finlay, 41
Brisbane Bayside
Just get it done, mate, just get it over and done with. Don’t die from Covid. Get the jab. Come here, get it done, it’s free, it’s all good. I’ve come here before work, the whole thing has taken about 40 minutes.
This is my second jab, and I feel really good about it. I don’t want to die from Covid, I’ve got a wife, and kids who are 19 and 17, they’ve all been done. I’ve done it for them and for myself and for all the people I deal with every day as a tow truck driver. In an accident or a breakdown, we are often the first people on the scene, before the ambo’s, the fireys or the police.
Nine out of ten times we are there first, and sometimes if it’s safe to do so we’ll help out. We have to calm people down, or get them away from a smoking car, or disconnect a battery. I can’t be doing that if I’m not vaccinated.
I used to do some work in NSW, I’d go down there a fair bit, but not any more. I just want to go to work; I want all the people in NSW and Victoria to go back to work.
I wear hearing aids in both ears and my wife Billie-Jo – who has also been vaccinated – has sewn these buttons on my cap so I wear my mask comfortably over my hearing aids, and it’s great, but I’d love to go back to not wearing a mask at all. We all would, so come on Queensland, just get the job done. I just did and couldn’t be happier about it.
THE NURSE
Emele Feao, 26
Drewvale, Brisbane
Everyone who gets the vaccination is nervous at first, mostly if it’s going to hurt – it doesn’t – and I just try to put them at ease. We do a check first, of course, any allergies, are you anaphylactic, are you pregnant, and then we usually just have a chat.
I ask what they are doing after this today, or what they are watching on Netflix. The thing that’s been really nice is that people are so nice to me, they always tell me they’re excited to be here, or that they’ve waited for so long, and they thank me for giving them the vaccination.
The No.1 comment I get is people voicing that they want to do their bit. I had a lady this morning who told me she was not an anti-vaxxer but someone who was sitting on the fence, but she decided to put aside any doubts for the good of all.
That’s the No.1 reason people are coming. It’s funny, I suppose I expected people to be more about just themselves, or their family, but no, everyone talks about the whole world. I hear “we are all in this together” a lot and “we’ve all got to do our bit”.
My whole family is vaccinated. My immediate family is here and my extended family relatives in Tonga have also been vaccinated, so I see this very much as people all over the world banding together.
This is a global pandemic, so it needs a global response. I’m proud to be part of that response. When I get home at night, after vaccinating people all day, I feel really good about myself and my job.
THE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
Amanda Mifsud, with Penelope, five months
Brisbane
As a small-business owner of a franchise, I am so keen for us all to be able to return to our lives and our businesses. I’m here for my first shot and I actually can’t wait.
I just think we really need to get the economy back on track, and everyone needs to feel safe going about their daily lives and the No.1 way to make sure that this happens is to get our vaccination rates up really high.
My staff need job security, they have mortgages to pay and families to feed. My business is in a retail centre, so I’ve seen first-hand the way these lockdowns really impact small businesses and their staff.
Jobkeeper was good, and then the loss-of-income grants were also really helpful but these measures are not sustainable forever.
I have four children, their ages are 6, 4, 2 and now this one Penelope, who is five months. I am doing this for their future.
I want them to grow up in a world that feels healthy and safe. I want them to enjoy the same freedoms I did. I was nervous to get vaccinated initially as I am still breastfeeding, but I feel confident that it is safe.
Now that I am here, I am really impressed with how smoothly the whole thing has gone. Bringing a baby I was a bit unsure how long it would take, but we’ve been in and out really quickly and the people here have been very professional and very helpful, so I think we are so lucky to have this service.
I feel being able to come here is a privilege actually, it’s clean and safe and I feel really pleased that I’ve now done my small bit to contribute to a better future not just for my kids, but for everyone. Just thankful really.
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Originally published as Inside Brisbane’s mass vaccination hub
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