Victoria’s most Covid-safe vaccination areas revealed

One Victorian coastal town has Australia’s highest vaccination rate but some areas are alarmingly unprotected. See how safe your area is.

The small coastal town of Queenscliff on the Bellarine Peninsula is Australia’s Covid-safest, with the highest vaccination rates in the country. Picture: Alan Barber

Melbourne is lagging Sydney in the vaccination race, with worrying figures showing the city centre has the worst jab rate in the state.

And no local government area in Victoria has managed to hit the 70 per cent single jab rate – compared with 11 in NSW.

New figures obtained by the Sunday Herald Sun reveal the best-performing council area in Melbourne is Bayside, where 68.5 per cent of people have had one shot and 44.9 per cent have had two – while Queenscliff on the Bellarine Peninsula has the highest vaccination rate of any council area in the country with 85 per cent having one jab and 63.3 per cent fully vaccinated.

In Melbourne’s north, vaccination rates are alarmingly low, with only 40-49 per cent of people in the LGAs of Hume, Whittlesea, Darebin and Moreland having one jab.

The same is true in the west in Melton, Brimbank and Wyndham.

In contrast, in Melbourne’s southeastern areas of Stonnington, Boroondara and Glen Eira, between 56 per cent and 65 per cent of people have had their first jabs.

Regional Victoria is faring better than metropolitan Melbourne, with the lowest vaccination rate for first jabs in Latrobe, where 50 per cent of people have had their first shots.

The national snapshot of LGAs reveals massive differences across the country and our state in vaccination uptakes. It also reveals the low vaccination rates in large parts of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, where less than 40 per cent have had a single jab.

Victoria’s worst-performing LGA was the City of Melbourne, where only 38.6 per cent of people are partially vaccinated and 24.1 fully protected – the worst figure for any capital city centre in the country.

It was closely followed by Greater Dandenong, Whittlesea, Casey and Cardinia, which had first jab rates of 40 to 49.9 per cent.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the Sunday Herald Sun vaccination was the best way to protect everyone from Covid-19 and was also part of the national plan to safely reopen and move out of lockdowns and heavy restrictions as the country moved towards 70 per cent and 80 per cent vaccination targets.

“This new data will turbocharge our vaccination rollout, giving us the ability to direct support to communities that need help and lift them up,” he said.

“Australians are rolling up their sleeves and getting vaccinated in record numbers but we must encourage every Australian in every community to come forward and get the jab.”

The national vaccination program has hit 18.7 million doses, 6.4 million of them in the past four weeks.

But while Melbourne might be lagging behind Sydney, Victoria is still streets ahead of some parts of the country.

The worst-performing LGA in the country is Grant near Mt Gambier in South Australia, where only 14 per cent people have been vaccinated and only 5.5 per cent fully protected.

Concerningly for NSW’s state government, the figures show more work needs to be done in some of the hardest-hit Sydney areas – Canterbury-Bankstown, Burwood, Bayside, Liverpool and Cumberland.

The figures also show the nation’s hippy headquarters of Byron is living up to its reputation as an anti-vaxxer stronghold with only 46.1 per cent of people partially protected and a quarter of population double jabbed.