West Coast chuffed with vaccine rates despite no public data
Tasmania’s West Coast Council is one of four LGA’s statewide with no vaccination data available, but locals, businesses and leaders are confident they’re getting the job done.
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They’re a proud bunch on Tasmania’s West Coast when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccination.
Residents, business owners and community leaders are confident the majority of the community are doing their bit to become inoculated.
The West Coast Council municipality is one of four Tasmanian LGAs with no Covid-19 vaccination data available but despite this, the mood of the region appears very much in favour of getting the jab.
“They’re all going good, they’re all very old and vulnerable but they know the good things are about,” 90-year-old Bev Mee said when asked how she and the other members of Queenstown Senior Citizens Club thought the Covid-19 vaccination rollout was coming along.
“We’re all doing what we’ve been told,” she continued.
“I think our group realises that we’ve had these types of things when we were children and what save us was the vaccinations – you know? tuberculosis, paralysis, all those sorts of things.”
“We just go with the medical advice but it’s the younger generations that think they know better than everyone else.”
Mrs Mee said herself and the rest of the club members all got vaccinated as soon as it was made available to them through their doctor and have all now had their second dose.
A few kilometres further toward the west coast at Strahan, cafe owner Rob Tassell took a little more convincing but he too will be fully vaccinated days to come.
“You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t,” he said.
For Mr Tassell, it was recently acquiring Molly’s Cafe – a cafe on one of Strahan’s busier strips – that prompted him to get the jab.
“(after) taking over the place, we thought “right, we‘re going to be here a lot more … so we booked in, got our jab, sat there and walked out,” he said.
“I reckon there is pretty good (vaccination) rates.”
Mr Tassell had his first shot at a pop-up clinic at the local Golf Club and plans to go back to complete it when it returns on Thursday and Friday.
West Coast mayor Shane Pitt agreed the community was pulling its weight in the vaccination stakes.
Last week a vaccine clinic in Rosebery ran out of doses and had to turn people away but Cr Pitt said that just showed the community’s willingness to get vaccinated.
“People are keen to vaccinate for sure,” he said.
“Our population around here is fairly elderly.”
The self-described ‘full time miner, part time mayor’ said his workplace and other mines in the area were incentivising the jab which he believed also boosted the LGA’s rates.
“I don’t think there’s any barrier’s at all really. Within the first month, I got a text from Ochre Health wanting to know if I’d get vaccinated, so they’ve been on the front foot too,” he said.
A spokesperson from the federal government’s Operation Covid Shield said LGA data is not released for some remote areas to protect peoples’ privacy but all vaccinations uploaded into the Australian Immunisation Register formed overall national and state vaccine data.
“Any information released provides an accurate picture of Australia’s vaccine rollout and (Lieutenant General John Frewen) is working with the states and territories on ways to release more detailed datasets,” the spokesperson said.
Despite the optimistic speculation around the LGA’s rates, vaccination opportunities remain available for West Coasters with the first of two clinics scheduled for Friday October 8 in Rosebery between 8.30am and 12pm, offering the first dose.
Strahan Golf Club will also be hosting its second clinic on October 7 and 8 and Zeehan’s second public clinic is scheduled for October 14.
Those still waiting for the jab in Queenstown can book in with Ochre Health who run weekly clinics every Wednesday and have recently added a Saturday Pfizer vaccination clinic on October 9.
Ochre also runs weekly clinics in Zeehan on Fridays. Bookings need to be made by calling the Queenstown practice.
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