THE Victorian Government has backed calls to pour more vaccines into Melbourne’s north and west, where the bulk of new COVID-19 cases are detected.<\/p>\n
Of the 324 new locally acquired infections reported in Victoria today, 297 came from the city’s northern (195) and western (102) suburbs.<\/p>\n
In an open letter signed by GPs, community leaders and pharmacists from Melbourne’s north, the federal and state governments have been asked to redirect Pfizer doses to the region to prevent a surge in\u00a0hospitalisations.<\/p>\n
“The vaccination rate in the Hume LGA is now the second-lowest in the state, at a time when it has the highest number of active coronavirus cases in the state,” the letter says.<\/p>\n
“This will create enormous pressure on our healthcare system and will cost lives.”<\/p>\n
Health Minister Martin Foley said about half of the state’s vaccine allocations were already going to the city’s COVID-hit north and west, but he strongly supported the call.<\/p>\n
“We will be doing all we can in our available stocks to reprioritise even more of those vaccines,” he told reporters today.<\/p>\n
“But we would also clearly support the call for the Commonwealth to deliver as much as they possibly can to the north and west.<\/p>\n
“What we are seeing now is a recognition of just the level of seriousness of the outbreak in the north and the west.”<\/p>\n
Mr Foley said 107 of the new cases were linked to known outbreaks, with the source of the remaining 217 infections under investigation.<\/p>\n
The last time Victoria recorded more than 300 cases was on August 14, 2020, when 301 infections were logged.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Premier Daniel Andrews said he wasn’t shocked by the jump in new infections.<\/p>\n
“The key point is to keep those numbers as low as we can – not zero – but to keep them as low as we can so that our nurses have got a fair fight,” he told reporters outside parliament.<\/p>\n
Mr Andrews said the Burnett Institute was working on detailed modelling, which will forecast the peak of the state’s COVID-19 outbreak, how the healthcare system will have to respond and what vaccine uptake will do to slow the spread.<\/p>\n
He expects the information will be made public in the coming week.<\/p>\n
Under the health department’s latest projections, Victoria will reach a total of 18,000 active cases by October 16, which is about 10 times the current rate of infection.<\/p>\n
Of those projected cases, 800 will need hospital treatment, including 250 who will require an intensive care bed.<\/p>\n
There are about 400 staffed and available intensive care beds available in Victoria daily.<\/p>\n
The state can make 1,500 available intensive care beds in the public hospital system if required, though the premier in April 2020 announced $1.3 billion in funds to create 4,000.<\/p>\n
There is an “enormous amount of work” being done to prepare the state’s hospitals for a surge in cases,\u00a0Mr Andrews says.<\/p>\n
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– BY AAP<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n