Slow start for COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Hunter general practices as low stock and delivery delays plague phase 1b

A number of medical practices in the Hunter had still not received vaccine stock on Monday morning, with most expecting it to have arrived by Friday.

At least one Hunter practice was forced to cancel appointments scheduled for Monday, while others have told patients they would not take bookings until their vaccine supply was on site and "in the fridge".

"We have been advised that a number of practices did not receive their supplies. Not all of them, but some of them," John Baillie, of the Hunter New England and Central Coast Primary Health Network, said.

"A lot of practices received some supplies on Saturday, and the rest should be arriving sometime [Monday]."

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Mr Baillie said the "challenging" logistics of the rollout had been compounded by road closures and flooding, but most Hunter practices were likely to start vaccinating mid-week.

"Other practices will start vaccinating once we have more supply," he said. "There is no rush. We have good community control at the moment, we haven't got any community clusters. I get that it's a little bit like Christmas and we all want to open our present, but we should just sit and wait and we'll get there as soon as we can."

It comes as the Therapeutic Goods Administration approved the domestic production of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The first batches are expected to be released within days.

Dr Lee Fong, senior clinical director at Hunter Primary Care, said it was "fantastic" there was so much enthusiasm to get COVID-19 vaccinations but this initial rollout would be "very slow", with many practices only receiving 50 vaccines a week.

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He was unaware of any practices who had started vaccinating patients on Monday, but many may choose to keep it "fairly quiet" to keep their phone lines free for urgent calls.

"Fortunately, we have little or no COVID-19 circulating in our community," he said. "We have time on our hands - unlike, for example, France, where there are nearly 4,500 people in ICU with COVID-19; or Brazil, where nearly 3,000 people are dying from COVID-19 every day. Or Papua New Guinea, where the infection rates just hit a daily record, staff are getting infected and their biggest hospital has run out of capacity. For us, getting vaccinated now is reassuring. For thousands of people overseas, getting vaccinated right now is the difference between life and death."

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Dr Fong said everyone who wants to get vaccinated for COVID-19 will, it was "just a matter of when".

"For these first two or three weeks, I suggest we sit back and wait for local vaccine production to ramp up, for the distribution kinks to be ironed out, and for those practices that have arranged it, for their online booking systems to go live," he said.

"And, as a community, if we're prepared to wait a little longer, perhaps diverting more of our local vaccine supply to our friends overseas might even be a good thing."

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