Mass COVID-19 vaccine hub to be set up in Sydney
NSW will open a mass vaccination hub to help aid the state’s COVID-19 jab rollout.
The clinic, to be set up in Homebush, in Sydney’s west, will be able to administer 30,000 vaccines a week.
Another 30,000 doses per week will be delivered across 100 other sites around the state.
“I also want to make this point, the hub at Homebush will be in addition to the 100 sites we will already have up and running,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.
“So the NSW Government, even after we’ve done the 300,000 we were asked to do, we’ll continue to have 100 sites up and running across the state in addition to a mass vaccination hub at Homebush.
“We anticipate that post-the 300,000 that we are responsible for we will be able to do around 60,000 vaccinations a week, half will be done at Homebush and the other half across the other 100 sites across the state.”
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the state’s mass vaccination hub will rely on the Commonwealth’s ability to deliver doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The Federal Government has to be able to provide the vaccine or nothing can really occur in terms of mass vaccination site,” Mr Hazzard said.
“There is no question that it’s been publicly acknowledged that the Federal Government set certain targets which have not been achieved and that’s not casting blame anywhere – it is just a reality.
“NSW is doing what we should be doing to step in and help our citizens get vaccinated as soon as the Federal Government can make the vaccine available.”
The hub will be located at a commercial building secured by the state government, the premier said.
No new local COVID-19 cases
No new cases of locally acquired COVID-19 were recorded in NSW overnight.
Six new cases were diagnosed in hotel quarantine.
“Can I stress NSW will be really focusing on the compliance of businesses,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“We don’t want to see QR codes hidden at the back of venues, they need to be front and centre.”
Vaccine rollout ‘still a Commonwealth responsibility’
Ms Berejiklian again stressed the vaccine rollout remains the responsibility of the Commonweath government.
“At the end of the day the Commonwealth is responsible for getting the vaccine to the states,” she said.
“We can physically get it up by May … But there’s no point getting it up and running and staffed until we get the doses.”
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the GP program remained the “front line” source of vaccinations.
“We are quite prepared to kick in and help with our Commonwealth colleagues to roll out the vaccines that they thought they were going to be doing but of course the message is still GPs are first and foremost who people should be reaching out to.”
