Warrnambool COVID testing rates have jumped by five times and vaccinations leapt by up to 300 per cent in recent days due to the Melbourne coronavirus outbreak.
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After a drop in vaccinations at the Warrnambool centre during the past fortnight, South West Healthcare COVID coordinator Sue Anderton said there had been a massive turnaround due to the current Victorian situation.
"It's pretty busy today after the recent announcements. Everyone is keen to get vaccinated, it's fabulous," she said at a media conference in front of about 70 people lined up to get a jab at Warrnambool's Merri Street centre.
"Supply of Pfizer to us is still an issue. We are currently running one clinic a week, that's a booked clinic (500 doses on Friday).
"Hopefully that will change in the next week. We are waiting to be advised."
Ms Anderton said the centre's online appointments were booked out which explained why some people were having trouble making bookings, but that was about to open up again for next week.
She said the recent outbreak and lockdown announcement were a real reminder that people could not be complacent about getting vaccinated.
"Now is the time to be vaccinated," she said, adding that vaccine availability was expected to further boost jab numbers.
"In our community I don't think we've had significant hesitancy. We've immunised a lot of people in our region, more than other regions.
"Essential people in our community have been quite keen to get vaccinated and I'm just hoping supply doesn't limit the ability of people to get vaccinated."
In figures released by South West Healthcare the number of people vaccinated as of May 14 was 2262, May 21 it was 6694 and on May 28 8365.
That equated to a more than 25 per cent drop between the last two figures.
But Ms Anderton said the vaccination rate had up to trebled this week as the Melbourne outbreak dominated the headlines.
She said the centre was awaiting confirmation that 40 to 49 year old people could now get vaccinated with Pfizer.
"It's been well documented now that the risks associated with AstraZeneca are quite small. It's still a very safe vaccine," she said.
The coordinator said walk-ins on Thursday had multiplied by at least three times regular numbers.
"People are very keen and the phones have been running hot with people enquiring about whether they can walk in to get their vaccine. We haven't had line-ups like this, only when we were doing emergency services," she said, adding testing rates had jumped from 20 a day to 100 for people with symptoms.
SWH director of infection prevention Dr Mark Page said an event like the Melbourne outbreak was inevitable.
"It was always going to happen. We live in part of the world, we can't shut ourselves off forever," he said.
"Until we have the vast majority of the community vaccinated against COVID these outbreaks are going to keep happening.
"The virus is going to keep mutating and we are going to have these complete upheavals of our lives.
"No one wants it, but we would say the message to everyone is there is a way out of these difficulties. The way out is to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate."
Dr Page said the solution was simple and a way out of the COVID pandemic was free and available, depending on vaccination availability.
"Everyone in the world wants them at once," he said.
He said vaccinations were effective and a United States study of the first 100 million people dosed there showed only 10,000 people ended up with COVID and only 160 died.
Dr Page said without the vaccination it was expected that two million people would have died in the USA.
"It's incredibly effective at preventing COVID deaths," he said.
Dr Page said each type of vaccination had adverse reactions which were different, but they were "very, very small" compared to what they could protect people against.
He said there had been 25 cases of AstraZeneca blood clotting in Australia and unfortunately one person had died.
"We now know what to look for and have a treatment for it," he said.
He said there had been nearly 3.8 million doses in Australia and one death.
"While one death is unfortunate, those numbers are extremely low compared to what we might be looking at if we were looking at COVID infection," he said.
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