Inner West Council: Push to open town halls for vaccine jabs

Darcy Byrne is calling on health authorities to allow him to open up mass jab clinics across the inner west’s town halls with Covid numbers ever increasing.

Doctors and pharmacists could be delivering coronavirus vaccines jabs at town halls across the inner west – the only thing stopping them is a stroke of the pen from the health minister.

Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne is calling on federal health authorities to sign off on permission for local medicos that would effectively create “mini mass vaccination hubs” in the suburbs.

As it stands GPs and pharmacists can use the council’s town halls to jab council workers, schoolchildren and employees of workplaces but are prevented from doing so for the rest of the general public.

Inner west town halls would be the perfect place for hubs, the mayor has said.

The Inner West Council area is currently recording more Covid cases in the last month than neighbouring Burwood and Strathfield, which have been listed as “LGAs of concern” by NSW Health.

“We’re not making use of council facilities,” Cr Byrne said.

“Most of our GPs are not doing walk-ups and are not taking bookings from public, they are prioritising existing patients and it’s actually not quite that simple.

The mayor, pictured, said Health’s resources were currently stretched. Picture: John Appleyard

“This next phase (of vaccinations) when we’re persuading people who haven’t had one yet, we need to make it as easy as possibly. I don’t want to wait, the virus is on our doorstep and the number has been steadily increasing in the inner west.”

According to council documents, NSW Health has told the mayor it did not have the resources to open a vaccination hub in the inner west while sending as many staff as possible to deal with the western Sydney outbreak.

Cr Byrne also said the use of army resources to deliver jabs has also been denied.

The solution would see empty venues like Newtown town hall opened up to the public.

Leichhardt Town Hall is another venue being offered up.

The mayor said he was willing to offer every town hall in the LGA and other facilities if GPs were allowed to roam the suburbs in mobile hubs.

“It would have been much better if the federal government had developed a plan for vaccine walk up clinics in every community across the country,” he said.

“The need for that is going to be more apparent, if not desperate, over the next couple of months.”

NSW Health and the Federal Department of Health have both been contacted for comment.

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