‘Great start’ for our

THE rollout of the first COVID-19 vaccines to key Tasmanian workers is gathering pace, with the jabs being delivered faster than expected.

Vaccinations began at the Royal Hobart Hospital Pfizer vaccine hub on Tuesday.

Health Department secretary Kathrine Morgan-Wicks said so far the delivery of vaccines to border, quarantine and frontline health staff was proceeding as planned.

“Based on our efforts in the first week and our efforts in drawing six doses from the majority of vials, we are on track to have more than 1100 priority workers vaccinated for each of the next two weeks, rather than 975 per week that we had originally estimated,” she said.

Ms Morgan-Wicks said so far one dose of vaccine had been lost because of a minor accident involving a sticky label on a syringe catching the lid of a vial.

“We have tweaked our processes to make sure this doesn’t occur again,” she said.

About 14,000 frontline workers will be vaccinated in phase 1A of the state government rollout to frontline

workers. Phase 1B for priority groups is expected to start in late March or early April and completed in June, depending on vaccination availability.

Priority groups are people aged over 70, other health workers, Aboriginal people, people with underlying medical conditions and high-risk workers such as defence, police, fire, emergency services and meat processing.

The vaccinations in phase 1B will be delivered via government clinics and general practitioners, with more than 100 Tasmanian GPs registered.

Ms Morgan-Wicks asked people covered by 1B not to call health authorities but to wait to be contacted.

“We will ensure Tasmanians are given plenty of notice of when the next phase will start and what people are expected to do in terms of booking an appointment,” she said.

Under the federal government vaccination program for people in the aged care and disability sectors, as of Thursday night 392 residents and staff had been vaccinated across five aged care sites in the state’s North and North-West.

Premier Peter Gutwein said the first week of the rollout had gone as planned. “It’s a great start but we still have a long way to go. The next batch of the vaccine is due to arrive on Sunday afternoon,” Mr Gutwein said.