Dear colleagues,
I hope you all found time over the weekend to enjoy the end of lockdown – whether that was visiting friends or family at home, a haircut or brunch at a café. We’re set to enjoy further freedoms from 6pm this Friday including Metro Melbourne and regional Victoria reuniting, retail opening, students returning to school and masks to be worn indoors only.
In addition to reaching the 80 per cent double vaccinated milestone this Friday, Victoria has now surpassed the 90 per cent rate for first dose vaccinations in people 16 years and over, which means our state is on track to become one of the most highly-vaccinated jurisdictions in the world.
Boosters
This morning the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has provisionally approved a booster dose of the Pfizer vaccine for individuals 18 years and older. The provisional approval means that individuals aged 18 years and older may receive a booster (third dose), at least six months after their second dose of any COVID vaccine.
Further advice on the use of boosters will be provided to the Commonwealth government shortly by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).
This is in addition to previous ATAGI advice whereby a third dose may be given to severely immunocompromised people aged 12 years and over at least 28 days after the second dose.
The priority continues to be completion of a two-dose vaccination schedule as this enables strong protection against severe illness and hospitalisation.
Healthcare workers and residential aged care staff and residents are amongst the first groups that are eligible to receive the booster. Western Health is awaiting advice from the Department of Health to allow us to start administering the booster, and we expect this advice to be imminent.
We’ll keep you informed on when we can start administering the booster. Once this commences we will be accepting walk ins, and appointments can be made via the 1800 675 398 hotline (not via the online portal at this stage). We will also begin making plans for in-reach vaccination for some residential aged care settings.
Plan for vaccination of 5-12 year olds
Our vaccination hubs will support the COVID-19 vaccination of 5-12 year olds as soon as TGA approval of vaccines for younger children and any relevant ATAGI guidance is released. Approximately 578,000 children belong to this age group in Victoria so we believe we’ll be able to achieve the vaccine roll out to this cohort relatively quickly.
State system scale down
The booster shots and 5–12-year-old vaccination roll out will create an additional workload; however, we have begun making plans to scale down our vaccination sites in line with the Department of Health’s plans to decommission much of the state-run system by the end of the year. It is likely that across Victoria, a small number of flexible fixed sites will be maintained into next year, which will likely include Sunshine and Melton. Some mobile and in-reach capacity will continue in order to support vulnerable members of our community.
Extended Secretary approvals for nurse and pharmacist immunisers
The Secretary of the Department of Health Approval for Nurse Immunisers has been extended to continue to allow appropriately trained nurse immunisers and pharmacist immunisers to administer the COVID-19 vaccine without an instruction from a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner. A direct link to the gazette covering this can be found here: http://www.gazette.vic.gov.au/gazette/Gazettes2021/GG2021S582.pdf.
Thank you video
To celebrate Victoria’s amazing vaccination rates, we’ve produced a short video that thanks our community for getting vaccinated and acknowledges the many individuals, organisations and community groups that have been instrumental in these efforts. Please take a minute to watch the video and share it with your networks. And to all staff involved in the West Metro COVID-19 Vaccination Program, a huge thank you from me to you.
Regards,
Shane Crowe
Executive Director Nursing and Midwifery