Alpine Health is striving to further increase the regions vaccination rate, after the Alpine Shire was the first North East local government area to surpass a 70 per cent double dose vaccination rate.
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Alpine Health chief executive Nick Shaw said it felt good to have passed the milestone, but there was more work to be done.
"It's been a really impressive response by the community and we're really pleased that we're able to demonstrate really solid rates of vaccination across most of the Shire," he said.
There's just still a couple of areas where we want to see a slight improvement.
- Nick Shaw
"There's just still a couple of areas where we want to see a slight improvement."
Mr Shaw said Alpine Health would be conducting a vaccination blitz in Myrtleford over the next couple of weeks, in addition to the current vaccine clinics, to improve uptake in the town.
He said Myrtleford was one of the larger communities in the Shire and that by changing clinic times they would be more accessible to working families.
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"They're a slightly younger community here too," he said.
"So the vaccine hasn't been available for as long to people in this community, so we're quite hopeful and we expect the rate of vaccination will increase quite quickly here on account of those changes."
Alpine Health has credited collaborative approach to vaccine delivery with making the council area the first in North East Victoria to reach 70 per cent full vaccinated.
"It all comes down to the range of health and related services all coming together in the provision of vaccination services," he said.
"So we've had all of the general practices across the Shire really involved in vaccinations, which has been wonderful.
"We now have pharmacy involved in the vaccination, Alpine Health, of course, have run vaccination clinics across each of our sites.
"We've had a mobile response, so we've been taking our clinic to communities rather than them having to come to us and I think that has made a real difference."
Mr Shaw said there was still room for more vaccine outreach programs.
Alpine Health vaccine clinic team leader Jaymee Williamson estimated she had administered about 10,000 COVID-19 vaccines both at the Wodonga vaccination hub and at Alpine Health's vaccination hubs.
As someone working on the front line of the vaccination program day in and day out since April, she advised anyone who was hesitant about receiving the vaccine to access reliable information from worthy sources.
"Don't take everything that's on social media as gospel," she said.
"Do a bit more research before [believing] what people say to you."
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