Nathan Emmerich

On the back of increasing criticism of the rollout of Australia’s vaccination programme the Federal government have asked The Australian Health Primary Protection Committee (AHPPC) to reconsider the issue of mandating vaccination for those working in Aged Care facilities. Prompted by the most recent outbreak in Victoria, it seems that vaccination of residents is now proceeding fairly rapidly across Australia. There are, however, worries about continued low(er) rates of uptake amongst staff, not all of whom are healthcare professionals.

Indeed, this seems to be a broader issue to do with vaccine hesitancy. The absence of COVID-19 from Australia and worries about vanishingly rare cases of blood clotting associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine seems to have led some to delay getting vaccinated. Although some under 50s have taken the initiative and got themselves vaccinated early, those over 50s that are delaying do not seem to be concerned about vaccination in general. Rather what seems to be going on is that they are hedging their bets, calculating that they are at very low risk of contracting COVID-19 because of the lack of cases. Thus, the recent spate of cases in Melbourne has directly resulted in an increase in the numbers of people seeking out a vaccine, something that many of them will have been putting off for the past few weeks.