Covid-19 jabs in offices, med students to be recruited as part of Australia’s vaccine sprint
Workplaces could be turned into mini-vaccination clinics with students or paramedics administering the jab under novel ideas to get the country vaccinated by the end of the year.
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Workplaces could be turned into mini-vaccination clinics and medical students or paramedics recruited to administer the Covid-19 jab in a bid to get the country vaccinated by the end of the year.
Covid-19 vaccine rollout lead Lieutenant General John Frewen will on Wednesday meet with nearly 30 of the country’s top business leaders in a bid to get the industry involved in the planned “sprint” in the last few months of the year.
Emerging from a “war game” meeting with state and territories to map out the rollout, Lt Gen Frewen said vaccine supply constraints remained the “key limiter” of the program.
Nearly 5 months in, just 9.4 per cent of Australians aged 16 or older have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
Analysis of the latest data shows that in order to vaccinate everyone aged 16 or older in Queensland by the end of the year, an average of 255,402 doses would need to be administered each week — 35 per cent more than the state’s current capacity.
Australia’s Covid-19 jab supply constraints are expected to ease significantly from September when stocks of Pfizer significantly increase and Moderna jabs start arriving.
Once this happens the rollout is expected to be broadened to include those under 40, while authorities will deploy a use it or lose it strategy by redistributing stocks to whomever was most efficiently administering doses.
Lt Gen Frewen said some states and territories were considering training medical students to administer the jab in order to bolster the vaccination workforce.
“There was talk of some of the paramedical sort of organisations that are out there that can also contribute. So all of these things are on the table,” he said.
In Queensland, Lt Gen Frewen said authorities were putting in place contingency plans in case the state is hit by bushfires or floods.
Lt Gen Frewen, alongside Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, will meet with leaders — including Australian Banking Association’s Anna Bligh and Virgin Australia’s Jayne Hrdlicka — on Wednesday morning.
It is expected a communication strategy to ensure consistent messaging on the vaccine rollout will be developed.
The potential of people getting Covid-19 jabs at workplaces will also be discussed.
“It’s another efficiency in the program potentially, it also takes burden off both the primary health care system and some of the state mechanisms if necessary,” Lt Gen Frewen said.
“And then I’ll also be having conversation with them around incentives maybe later in the programme when we are trying to move portions of the population towards getting vaccinated.”
A more detailed “war gaming” session with business leaders is expected to be held in the next fortnight.
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Originally published as Covid-19 jabs in offices, med students to be recruited as part of Australia’s vaccine sprint
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