COVID-19 Vaccination

I welcome the commencement of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout as the tremendously important milestone that it is for our nation. The Gold Coast University Hospital, in my central Gold Coast electorate of Moncrieff, is one of 16 national vaccination hubs with logistics capabilities necessary for the Pfizer vaccine. They’re starting off with about 300 vaccinations a day—that’s quite a lot—and will ramp up their activities from there.

The first priority group includes, of course, the frontline workers in health and quarantine who have a greater risk of exposure while they do their important work that cares for so many people and keeps our wider community safer. Thank you to all those at the front line for the way that you serve our community. Thank you to all those who are contributing to the vaccine rollout who might be preparing a vaccination hub or a venue right now to roll out the vaccine. I thank you all for the extra time, effort and work that you’re putting into that. Accurate information about vaccination and other COVID-19 measures is, of course, very important, and I urge everyone to use only trusted sources. For example, you can go to health.gov.au, you can visit your GP or you can even go to my website, which will direct you to the Health website.

Australians have a record of being sensibly pro-vaccination, and that will be on display during this rollout. This twin health and economic advance is a result of international cooperation, sound preparations locally and the efforts of a large number of individuals, and I congratulate the Minister for Health for the way he’s handled this.