Hello and welcome to your latest Covid Vaccination Hub Bulletin.
A pleasing uptake in vaccinations across the Hub has been noted over the past week, and we are getting very close to the impressive milestone of 400,000 vaccinations recorded. See the graph below showing weekly activity.
To support vaccination accessibility across the West Metro area, two new pop up hubs will be ready for business in early to mid August. These will be located at Darlingsford Barn in Melton and Rockbank Hall in Melton. The Vaccination Hub at Werribee Mercy will also recommence in August.
A reminder that the Pfizer vaccine is now available for first dose for all people irrespective of age in the following priority groups:
- all health care workers
- all hotel quarantine and border workers
- household contacts (aged 16 years and over) of hotel quarantine workers
- residential aged and disability care workers and residents.
The Commonwealth Government has also announced this week that people who are pregnant aged 16 years and over are now eligible for a COVID-19 vaccination. As vaccination and pregnancy has been a topic of interest to many staff and the women they are caring for, a special bulletin was sent out earlier this week about this announcement. If you missed this bulletin, click here to read more.
All eligible people are encouraged to call the Victorian Coronavirus Hotline on 1800 675 398 to book their appointment or book via the online booking portal.
Please encourage your family and friends who are eligible to receive the vaccine to check the on line booking portal regularly if they cannot get an appointment, as more publicly bookable appointments are regularly released by the Department of Health where there are unused appointments or additional vaccine has been secured.
Please ensure you have your second dose of vaccine. You are not optimally protected against COVID-19 without 2 doses. This is more important than ever with episodes of outbreaks of the highly infectious Delta strain occurring across Australia. Please do not delay.
All Western Health staff currently on our records as not having received the COVID-19 vaccine at a Western health site received an email or SMS last week to complete a very brief survey. Thank you to the staff who completed this survey. It has enabled us to update our records with staff who have been vaccinated elsewhere so we have an accurate source of truth. This will allow us to understand if there are any areas or staff groups that may need some targeted education to address any vaccine hesitancy that may still exist.
Finally, on Wednesday 21 July Dr Marion Kainer (Head of Infectious Diseases) presented at the Ground Round on Variants of concern, Ventilation and Vaccination. For those who missed out on hearing this informative presentation please click here to view a recording of the session.
Check out the COVID-19 Vaccination microsite to keep up to date with everything relating to the COVID-19 vaccination.
Regards,
Shane Crowe
Executive Director Nursing & Midwifery
Vaccination Activity
A weekly graph of vaccination activity across our Vaccination Hub has been developed and placed on the front page of the vaccination site. The latest graph shows that at 25 July 2021, second vaccine doses have been provided to over 140,000 people.
Top 3 Questions
In this week’s Commonwealth Department of Health video, Dr Lucas de Toca answers the following questions:
- Why are some people having to wait a little longer than expected to get the COVID-19 vaccine?
- What are the things I can do to support my mental health and wellbeing during uncertain times?
- Why should I get vaccinated if I have already had COVID-19 and recovered?