Fear and scepticism the enemy in western rollout
Covid-19 vaccinations may be going ‘gangbusters’ in western NSW, according to health chiefs, but there are calls for a new approach to combat hesitancy.
Covid-19 vaccinations may be going “gangbusters” in western NSW, according to health chiefs, but there are calls for a new approach to combat entrenched hesitancy and accelerate the rollout for Indigenous Australians.
Community leaders are concerned First Nations people in poor health are still unvaccinated, both in remote areas and larger towns that have established outreach and culturally sensitive methods.
Wiradjuri woman Grace Toomey says authorities need to use Aboriginal nurses and health practitioners to directly engage with the anxious and hesitant, especially people living in poor housing estates, with a message that cuts through.
Ms Toomey, who lives in Dubbo and is a councillor with the Central Region Land Council, said conspiracy theories were circulating on social media about the alleged dangers of vaccines and that was hindering take-up among vulnerable people across western NSW.
“They often have drug and alcohol-related issues and don’t have the patience to wait in line for hours, as they’re already anxious enough,” she told The Australian.
“The rush to vaccinate here is dying down and you won’t be able to reach a lot of people so we have to go to them directly, clearly explaining the health and social benefits, for them and the community.
“The main thing is to make it clear that they are making a decision, not being forced to do something on the spot. And if they can’t do that, you won’t get high coverage and the infection numbers will just keep rising.”
Dubbo mayor Steve Lawrence sees vaccine hesitancy as a festering problem and a significant issue in the Aboriginal community, and says more labour-intensive measures may be needed to combat it.
“That’s what I’m observing here in Dubbo,” he said. “You need to try to understand some of the complex realities in a cultural sense of the experience the Aboriginal community has had over the decades with government policy.
“I think fear and scepticism around vaccines is finding a pretty receptive audience among people who are alienated and disadvantaged. This conversation about vaccine hesitancy is happening at the same time as a conversation about the rights and wrongs of the intensity of the vaccine rollout in the Aboriginal community.
“There’s a connection between the two in the sense that this is a medical procedure and there are a number of questions about how the rollout could have been done differently … in my mind it would have involved a very significant allocation of resources in terms of public health workers going door to door in communities”.
Australian Defence Force and Australian Medical Assistance Team members have been deployed in the region, sometimes going door to door, and staffing pop-up clinics in towns as far as the border with South Australia.
NSW commander of Operation Covid-19 Assist Colonel Warwick Young said the ADF and other agencies were on the ground in strong numbers and in several locations in the regional NSW infections epicentre, from Condobolin to Collarenebri, Dubbo to Dunedoo. “The reality is, no one could see this coming,” he said of the Covid-19 outbreak in the NSW western district. “We’re providing the extra muscle to deliver vaccinations with others,” he said, especially to Indigenous people, who were our “national treasures”.
“Every Australian is important, but when we have got a section of the community that is at high risk of Covid, we’re happy to provide that safety and security that people see in a navy or army uniform”.
Colonel Young said the joint inter-agency Vaccine Outreach Team comprising NSW Health and ADF members had administered more than 14,000 vaccines since it commenced operations.
“Vaccine uptake has been very good across the area of operations, with vaccinations in the larger regional towns of 5000 in Dubbo, 1300 in Parkes, Gulgong and Forbes, 1000 in Nyngan and Mudgee,” he said. “Of note and very important has been equally good up-take in the smaller regional towns with vaccinations of in excess of 500 in Trangie, 200 in Peak Hill and 100 in Bourke and Lightning Ridge.”
On Friday, Luke O’Connor, 23, who works on a sheep farm and also does cropping, received his first vaccine dose at the ADF clinic at Dunedoo, an hour out of Dubbo. Mr O’Connor, who has his own farm block, said: “I feel great I got my vaccination.”
Western NSW Local Health District chief executive Scott McLachlan said “vaccinations have been going gangbusters” .
Mr McLachlan said more than 16,000 doses had been administered in the district’s vaccine hubs in the past few weeks and vaccines were “flying off the shelves”.
According to figures from federal health officials, last week 62 per cent of eligible people in the NSW central we and just over 65 per cent of people in the far west and Orana sub-state area had received their first vaccination dose.
That compares with a NSW average of 68 per cent when those figures were finalised.
Rates for full vaccination in the area that takes in Dubbo, Wilcannia, Bourke and Walgett were only 27 per cent at the start of last week, compared with a NSW average of 37 per cent. Indigenous vaccination rates are trailing far behind national averages, according to figures released after a motion in the Senate last week moved by Labor’s Patrick Dodson.
At the end of August, 47 per cent of First Nations people in the far west and Orana had received a first jab and only 14 per cent were fully vaccinated.
Mr Lawrence said hesitancy and complacency were apparent in Dubbo before the outbreak that began five weeks ago, with vaccination appointments going begging. “Right now, there is a focus on rapid methods of mass vaccination but soon there will have to be more focus on those who are hard to reach … you will need to employ more inefficient measures to reach those parts of the community.
“So you may be talking about Aboriginal health workers going door to door rather than turning up at the local park or hall in Bourke and just waiting for people to come.” On Friday, national cabinet was briefed by Lieutenant General John Frewen, co-ordinator general of Operation Covid Shield, on plans to accelerate the vaccine rollout to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Scott Morrison said the strategy would build on “existing plans, the learnings and momentum gained from the response to recent outbreaks in western NSW”.
The Prime Minister said these plans had been developed in partnership with the Indigenous health sect or and state and territories.
“The plan focuses on targeted support for communities, increasing primary care and state and territory clinic throughput by bolstering points of presence and supplementing the vaccine workforce, along with communication materials to dispel misinformation and reduce hesitancy,” he said.
National cabinet agreed the taskforce would do more work to increase vaccination rates among disadvantaged communities and report back by the end of this week.
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