Not enough jabs for kids, say GPs

DOCTORS are warning it will be impossible to vaccinate every child aged five to 11 before school starts.

And doctors are pleading to be given larger supplies of the vaccine to speed up the rollout.

GP practices are allocated a maximum of 200 childhood vaccines a fortnight, but deliveries are frequently not arriving, forcing GP practices to cancel vaccination clinics.

More than half of the 3000 parents surveyed by lobby group The Parenthood said the return to school should be delayed until more children were vaccinated and rapid antigen tests and air purifiers became available.

With only one week to go before school returns, only one in four children aged five to 11 have had their first dose and must wait eight weeks before receiving their second.

“If a general practice has 1500 children to vaccinate over an eight-week period, delivery of 50 or 100 vaccines a week is really significantly under supply and will drag out the program by many months,” Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Victoria chairwoman Dr Anita Munoz said.

RACGP president Dr Karen Price said even though there would be more vaccines for kids than children eligible by the end of the month the problem was “getting it out and into the fridges”.

There are 2.3 million children aged five to 11.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said as of Friday more than 1.8 million doses of vaccine for 5-11 year olds had been delivered to vaccination sites.

This would increase to 2.4 million by the end of January, the department said.