The Victorian government will provide the AstraZeneca vaccine to under-40s at its state-run vaccine clinics and has launched the nation’s first drive-through vaccination operation at a former Bunnings site.
Victoria, into day three of its seven-day lockdown, recorded 11 new locally transmitted cases on Sunday, all linked to the Hobsons Bay cluster. That cluster was started in Melbourne’s west and south-west with a teacher from the Al-Taqwa College.
Of Sunday’s cases, four are students from Al-Taqwa College, three are household contacts from a confirmed case at the Wolf Cafe and Eatery in Altona North, while another is associated with a case at the Newport Football Club. Three are linked to the CS Square Shopping Centre in Caroline Springs.
At the Flemington public housing tower where there were positive cases within a family, Victorian authorities reported all residents on the 17th floor had returned negative results.
“So that’s very pleasing. It doesn’t mean we are out of the woods there, doesn’t mean we can change the settings, but better to have negative results than positive,” premier Daniel Andrews said.
The state is still desperately trying to work out how the outbreak started, and concerns about mystery cases were cited by Andrews when asked whether the lockdown could continue past its scheduled end on Thursday.
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In an effort to boost vaccination rates, the Victorian government announced it would begin administering AstraZeneca doses to those aged 18-39 at nine of its state-run vaccine clinics.
More state-run clinics will begin administering the vaccine to under-40s in the near future. The state government wants to assess demand and a new rigorous informed consent process before mirroring the approach across its network of 50 state-run clinics.
“I’m a 52-year-old bloke, if I were 25 and AstraZeneca was the only vaccine available to me today, I would get it,” the chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, said.
“Of course, it’s your individual choice, but I have said all the way through the best vaccine to get is the one that’s available to you today.”
It will also conduct a “soft launch” of a drive-through vaccine centre which will administer Pfizer at a former Bunnings site in Melton. The drive-through operation will administer 10,000 doses per week and is expected to ramp up and include AstraZeneca doses if successful.
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“You book, you drive up, roll down your window, roll up your sleeve, get a jab, it’s that easy,” Naomi Bromley, the deputy head of Victoria’s Covid response, said. “This is a fantastic addition to our existing state infrastructure. It will be a really good and convenient, simple, safe way for Victorians to get vaccinated.”
Cars will be taken through in tranches, initially consisting of about 10 cars, before sitting in a waiting area after the jab, where roaming nurses will monitor for side-effects.
The government also announced that from Monday, children aged 12 to 15 with specified medical conditions, or who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, will be eligible to receive the Pfizer vaccine in state-run clinics, in addition to GPs.
The state continues to warn that its access to Pfizer supplies remains limited. There is no supply constraint to AstraZeneca.
When asked whether Victoria’s lockdown may extend beyond Thursday, Andrews responded only that the state would be in lockdown “no longer than we need to be”.
“But there is this ongoing challenge we have in that the two cases that began these two separate chains of transmission and this outbreak, we can’t work out where they got it,” he said. “Those mystery cases, which I think Victorians well understood just how challenging a mystery case is, it means there’s at least one other or a group of other cases out there somewhere.”
Andrews said some Victorians had broken rules and visited loved ones during the current outbreak.
“Just think about the person you love the most. And then picture them on a ventilator struggling for every breath,” he said. “And keep that picture in your mind whenever you think about maybe making a bad choice.”
