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

To add to the Prime Minister's answer, he is correct that two fundamental outcomes of the last year have been 89 per cent of residents around Australia having been vaccinated, and we continue to encourage all of families to ensure that they do give consent for their elderly relatives to be vaccinated. It's absolutely fundamental. Equally, we want to encourage every one of the aged-care workers to take up the opportunity. Every aged-care worker will have that opportunity. We have done what other jurisdictions have not, but which they are now considering with regard to healthcare workers, and on the medical advice we did put in place a requirement that all aged-care workers, unless they have an exemption, do have vaccination as a workplace requirement.

What that has done has seen a skyrocketing of rates. There has been a significant period of access, since March, for aged-care workers. What we have done though is supplement that with a combination of general practice, pharmacy, state clinics, Commonwealth vaccination clinics—39 hubs around Australia—and now in terms of the other channels that are available we have the inreach channels in particular. A thousand onsite clinics at residential aged-care facilities have been delivered, 670 onsite clinics organised by residential aged-care providers themselves. We also have 585 onsite clinics delivered by GPs or Commonwealth vaccination clinics. All of these are giving every aged-care worker the opportunity to be vaccinated. (Time expired)

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