"We're one team and one community in New South Wales," Premier Gladys Berejiklian said after announcing a "redistribution of Pfizer vaccines" from country areas to Sydney.
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The vaccines will go to Year 12 students in Covid-19 hotspots in southwest Sydney, to get them into classrooms next month ahead of the HSC.
The Western NSW Local Health District yesterday afternoon confirmed, that "up to 40,000 Pfizer doses will be allocated from NSW Health's rural and regional supply", adding that the doses would be "sourced from supplies across rural and regional NSW to ensure no one area is impacted".
The vaccination rate across the Western Local Health District is 11.4 per cent - that is the percentage of people who have had two doses of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer.
Western NSW Local Health District Chief Executive Scott McLachlan supported the move, saying a recent influx of vaccines from the Australian Government meant there's no shortage of supply.
"There's a huge volume of vaccinations coming into the general practices, Aboriginal Medical service and respiratory network right across the whole district," Mr McLachlan said.
"What we do know, is there's around five times more Pfizer supply available."
The additional supply from the Commonwealth was distributed amongst GPs and vaccination clinics in recent weeks. But there'll be a wait before we know the impact of the redirection of Pfizer doses, on the regional vaccination program.
"We're still talking with NSW Health about the change to our vaccination program so we're not clear on that yet, but we'll keep updating the community and obviously people that are booked in for their vaccinations if there is any change to their appointments.
"We're taking stock of the situation in Sydney," Mr McLachlan said.
"We know it's getting to be a really serious situation, the intention is to try and get their kids back to school, to get workplaces resuming, get life back to normal as quickly as possible.
"So I'm very supportive of the vaccination programs in Sydney if it does mean that we need to constrain some of the supply of vaccines in Western NSW to help them out, I think that's the right thing to do."
"I would encourage everyone to look at the vaccination eligibility tracker and find opportunities to be vaccinated," Mr McLachlan said.
The tracker can be found at: https://covid-vaccine.healthdirect.gov.au
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