Aged care first cab off the jab rank

Hundreds of aged care facilities in more than 200 towns across the nation will start administering coronavirus jabs from next week in what will be the largest vaccination exercise in Australia’s history.

Health Minister Greg Hunt during a media conference on COVID-19 and the rollout of the government's vaccination program. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Hundreds of aged care facilities in more than 200 towns across the nation will start administering coronavirus jabs from next week in what will be the largest vaccination exercise in Australia’s history.

Health Minister Greg Hunt on Thursday said a team of 500 specialist nurses would be deployed around Australia to help administer the first tranche of Pfizer vaccines to the elderly with frontline health care and aged care workers next in line to receive a jab.

He said phase “1a” of the rollout would involve three priority groups, including aged care and disability residents and staff, quarantine and border workers, and frontline health workers.

“Our frontline border and quarantine workers, and people living and working in residential aged and disability care facilities will be the first to receive their vaccines,” Mr Hunt said.

Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy welcomed the news, declaring that the rollout would be the “single-biggest, and most complex, vaccination task in the history of this nation.”

“We are so extraordinarily grateful in the Commonwealth to our partners in the states and territories, the vaccination workforce, the logistics and data providers, the aged care operators, who have been asked to do so much,” he said.

Priority will be given to aged-care facilities with the 250 homes receiving 30,000 doses, and hotel quarantine, with 50,000 units allocated for those workers.

There will be 16 Pfizer hubs, where priority quarantine and health workers will be able to go to get their vaccine.

A further 60,000 doses are set aside for second injections and as a precautionary measure in case there is a break in the supply chain from the European Union.

Professor Murphy said a complex “risk matrix” was used to decide which places to go to first.

“We believe that vaccinating the quarantine and border workers will substantially protect them from transmission, we hope, but certainly from getting symptomatic COVID,” Professor Murphy said. “That’s our single highest priority in the first few weeks.”

While the rollout will begin with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine it will be expanded to include the AstraZeneca vaccine for health care workers from March after it was approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration on Tuesday.

Mr Hunt said the first towns to receive the jab were dispersed across Australia.

“Those towns cover all of Australia, commencing in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory ... here in the ACT, towns such as Weston and Narrabundah,” he said.

“We know that in Tasmania it could be in Burnie or in Somerset … all of these are on the list, among others.”

Professor Murphy said the vaccine rollout had come at an ideal time considering all states and territories recorded zero community transmission on Thursday.

“It’s important to recognise we have no community transmission at the moment,” he said.

“We have several weeks to safely vaccinate our aged care facilities, and that’s what we are planning to do. If we had an outbreak we might change the schedule, but there is no impending serious risk at the moment which is a great position to be in.”

Minister Hunt confirmed the TGA was close to completing its “batch testing” of the Pfizer vaccine doses that arrived in Australia on Monday.

Professor Murphy confirmed that they would be defrosted and dispatched across the country.

“Well, it will be defrosted before it’s transferred to the aged care facilities and then reconstituted on-site. So it lasts in the fridge for three or five days,” he said.

“In the Pfizer hubs in the states and territories, it will largely be defrosted on the day of administration.”