BRISBANE, Australia — The Queensland government will join the coronavirus vaccine drive in private aged care amid concerns about the speed of the federal government’s rollout.
The federal Department of Health has administered 72,772 vaccine doses in private aged care facilities as of June 1.
It’s unclear how many aged care workers are currently fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in Queensland.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles says the state government will step in — as the Victorian government has done — to ensure all aged care workers get the jab quickly.
“This has just been announced this morning, and again, this is the state government stepping in where the federal government has been too slow, and really have failed,” he said on June 2.
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath is due to speak about the state government’s intervention in Townsville later on June 2.
“We want to see all aged care workers vaccinated as soon as possible and will have more to say in coming days about how they can get vaccinated,” she said in a statement.
There were almost 258,000 Queenslanders accessing state-run and private aged care or home support in June 2020, according to the federal figures.
About 33,500 people were working in residential aged care facilities alone in the state at the time of the last census in 2016.
All state and private aged care residents, home care users and workers require two vaccine doses.
That means about 583,000 doses at the very least will need to be administered for Queensland’s aged care sector to be fully vaccinated.
The state reported no new community cases of Covid-19 on June 2 with one new case in hotel quarantine.
For the second day running, however, there was a delay in testing numbers which the government did not explain.
“Full testing numbers are delayed, but if you get sick please go and get tested,” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk tweeted.
The Queensland government gave out a set of instructions on what can the citizens do and what they cant do amidst the crisis which included only 100 people can gather at a private residence while there is no limit to the number of people that can gather in outdoor public spaces.
“Wednesday 2 June — coronavirus cases in Queensland: 0 new local cases, 1 overseas acquired case, 14 active cases, 1,619 total cases and 2,639,081* tests conducted. Sadly, seven people with Covid-19 have died. 1,591 patients have recovered,” she tweeted.
(Edited by Vaibhav Vishwanath Pawar and Praveen Pramod Tewari. Map by Urvashi Makwana)
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