Hello and welcome to your latest Covid Vaccination Hub Bulletin.
Our Vaccination Hub continues to do an outstanding job! Over 350,000 vaccinations have now been recorded at sites across the Hub. See the graph below showing weekly activity.
To ensure the greatest coverage of the West Metro area we have commenced an additional outreach vaccination service in the Wyndham Civic Centre and an additional site, occupying the disused Bunnings at Woodgrove in Melton, is currently being established.
From today, car parking for public attending the Sunshine Hospital Vaccination Hub has changed from the multi-deck car park to the adjoining Ace car park. Click here to read more.
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.
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 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 within Victoria and across Australia. Please do not delay. The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) advises that in outbreak situations such as the current situation in New South Wales, an interval of between 4 and 8 weeks is preferred for the AstraZeneca vaccine. For Pfizer, it is still recommended that you get your second dose at 3-6 weeks.
All Western Health staff currently on our records as not having received the COVID-19 vaccine at a Western health site will have received an email or SMS earlier this week to complete a very brief survey. We know that in many cases staff will have been vaccinated elsewhere, so this quick survey is designed to capture this and ensure that records are up to date and accurate. The link to the survey can also be found here: Western Health COVID-19 Vaccination
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 18 July 2021, second vaccine doses have been provided to over 120,000 people.
Top 3 Questions
In this week’s Commonwealth Department of Health video, Professor Michael Kidd answers the following questions:
- How do rapid COVID-19 tests differ from other tests?
- How many people need to be vaccinated for Australia to achieve herd immunity?
- What causes the COVID-19 virus to change?
Vaccination messages
Do you have friends and family who are weighing up whether to get vaccinated?
Feel free to share the following vaccination messages.
Click on the images to view.