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

I want to thank the member for Berowra not just for his question but for his passion for mental health and for suicide prevention and his focus on his community during this very challenging time. As I mentioned earlier, this pandemic continues to rage around the world, with over 700,000 cases in the last 24 hours and 14½ thousand lives lost. Those figures remind us of the global challenge.

Against that background, Australians have been stepping forward, There have been 335,000 vaccinations in the last 24 hours—a rate which means that we are now vaccinating on a higher seven-day rolling average than at any time in the US or the UK rollouts. At the heart of that have been our GPs and our pharmacists. Our primary care deliverers are approaching 10 million vaccinations—the lion's share of now over 18 million vaccinations. They've worked in difficult circumstances. They've changed their hours and opened their practices, and they have helped save lives and protect lives on a grand scale. Our pharmacies and our GPs did this through all of the phases. All of those people employed in that work have been absolute heroes. What we see now is that 55.2 per cent of eligible Australians have had a first vaccination, and the majority of them have done it through our primary care networks.

Magda Campbell, the founder of the MC Family Medical Practice, has been in business, I believe, for over 35 years. As a consequence of that, she's been passionate about supporting her community. Over 2,300 vaccines have been delivered through this one practice alone. Equally, the TerryWhite pharmacy in Hornsby has stepped up recently and entered the program and delivered over 250 vaccines already. And those two businesses are emblematic of over 5,200 general practices and over 2½ thousand pharmacies—a number which will grow, by the end of this week, to 2,900 pharmacies. All of these practitioners are committed to supporting Australians. What we've seen is healthcare workers who have helped deliver, as part of the 6.7 million vaccines administered in the last 30 days. Melbourne, Adelaide, Wollongong—the full populations of those all done in the last 30 days. Our GPs and our pharmacists have been at the heart of it. We thank them. We honour them.

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