Victoria Covid update: state halves wait time for AstraZeneca vaccine doses after 176 new cases
Victoria has halved the wait time for second doses of AstraZeneca as the state battles soaring Covid case numbers from the Delta outbreak.
The Victorian health minister, Martin Foley, said the wait time between AstraZeneca vaccinations would be halved from 12 to six weeks in staterun clinics in a push to reach 70% and 80% vaccination targets.
“That matches the dosage interval for the Pfizer vaccine, so it will be six weeks for AstraZeneca and for Pfizer bookings going forward. And these changes will be active in the booking system from today,” Foley said.
“The reason we had started out with the 12-week spacing was the original clinical trials that were conducted on the AstraZeneca vaccine showed that there was a higher degree of protection at that 12-week spacing.
“Now, in line with the Atagi guidance, because we have established community transmission in Melbourne, because the risk of infection is increasing, because we know with the
Delta variant, two doses are critically important for getting those high levels of protection … it really is important that we get those second doses in.”
There were 176 new locally acquired cases reported on Thursday, with the source of 93 cases still under investigation and an unknown number of cases in isolation throughout their infectious period.
The acting chief health officer, Ben Cowie, said the greatest transmission was occurring through workplaces, followed by households, and wasn’t necessarily because people were doing the wrong thing.
“The greater number of active cases in community, the greater chance there is for the virus to escape,” Cowie said.
“There is transmission in the community, transmission in workplaces. We need to work with workplaces to ensure every Covid-safe guideline is being applied. It is critical to work from home if you can do that, and only authorised workers should be out.”
Of particular concern is an outbreak of 17 cases at Acquire call-centre operations, and a positive case detected at St Kilda’s Base Backpackers that has been transferred to managed isolation.
There are 400 primary close contacts already linked to Acquire, which runs four different call centres as a commercial provider for organisations including Healthcare Australia, a supporter of the vaccination program.
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Foley said positive wastewater had been detected in a number of suburbs across Melbourne’s south and south
east, and urged residents to pay attention to exposure sites and get tested if any symptoms arose.
“The truth is, as the premier indicated yesterday, we have rising case numbers, and we all need to be increasingly on high alert to the risks that go with increasing transmission of Covid in our community,” Foley said.
Regional Victoria, excluding Shepparton, remains on track to ease restrictions from next week, with no ongoing community transmission detected outside metropolitan Melbourne.
There were 13 further cases linked to the Shepparton outbreak on Thursday, all the results of managed day 13 testing.
There were 61 people being treated in Victorian hospital with Covid on Thursday, including 21 in intensive care and 13 requiring ventilation.
Foley said Victoria had recently passed the milestone of five million vaccine doses administered since the rollout began.
There were 33,720 vaccine doses administered across state-run clinics on Wednesday.
The premier, Daniel Andrews, yesterday named 23 September as the date for the state to reach 70% of first vaccine doses and begin to lift restrictions.
Foley said recent numbers placed Victoria “more than halfway” to its target of one million vaccinations in five weeks.
“We know that vaccines continue to be their way out of this pandemic, and the way to gradual easing of the restrictions, and there is no more important thing than either getting tested, if you show any signs, and getting a vaccine as soon as you can,” he said.
The Royal Children’s hospital mental health services director, Rick Haslam, said the pandemic had been punishing for the state’s young people, with the hospital seeing “considerable sustained increases” in young people presenting with mental health concerns.
“This is on the back of increases in mental healthcare that have needed to be provided to Victorian children, year on year, in excess of the increases for acute health such as medical and surgical conditions,” he said.
“This has been the experience of my colleagues across a regional Victoria, across other jurisdictions in Australia, and in fact internationally, there is a really notable rise in anxiety and depression, taking its way through children and adolescents.”
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