Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

Yes is the simple answer, and the reason is that, at this stage, what we are seeing is a dramatic increase in aged-care worker vaccinations as a result of the national cabinet decision. It was a difficult and challenging decision, and I'm pleased that all of the premiers and chief ministers supported the initiative of the Prime Minister and the AHPPC to support and encourage aged-care workers to take up the vaccine. I'm actually very pleased to be able to say that that number has increased significantly—almost five per cent in one day—and 76.1 per cent of aged-care workers now have had a vaccination. That is as a result of inreach programs and outreach programs.

The programs that we've put in place include general practice visits, the state vaccine clinics, the Commonwealth vaccine clinics, the roving clinics, the inreach clinics—and these clinics are being provided through self-vaccination, which has been a highly effective mechanism I've mentioned before. TLC and Lou Pascuzzi and his team in Victoria have done an extraordinary job. They've created and provided a national model which is being rolled out. We have vaccination service providers which are providing those vaccines around the country, and we also have, in relation to that, the inreach work of general practices and primary health networks that are assisting. So there are multiple pathways for those vaccinations. Indeed, we have had over 670 onsite clinics organised recently by residential aged-care providers themselves, as I mentioned. There have been dedicated aged-care clinics recently for 585 RACFs—residential aged-care facilities. So all of these things are occurring.

There is another thing that is happening at the same time, and I think this is very important and pleasing. There were those residents for whom consent was not given either by the resident or their family, even though we had visited all facilities. Through these programs on inreach we've seen the number of residents increase successively from 85 to 86, 87, 88 and, now, 88.4 per cent of residents. Many of them have had their doubts, or their families have not been supportive, so all of these things—

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