Dubbo general practitioner Dr Ai-Vee Chua has thrown her support behind the call for the Dubbo community to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
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Speaking on Wednesday, Dr Chua urged the entire community to get vaccinated against the virus.
"The message that I want to get across is that the best vaccine is the one you can access right now. And that doesn't matter if that's the AstraZeneca or Pfizer. Whichever one you can get right now is the best one for you," she said.
She said when the vaccines were going through their trial phases and being approved by the TGA late last year she spent hours trawling thought the clinical trials material and the research findings, about the vaccines.
"From there I was able to make a decision whether this was something that I needed to have, my family needed to have and my patients needed to have.
"And I can say with 100 per cent certainty we have very good vaccines here.
"All your own GPs would have gone through exactly the same process in trawling through that information, and making sure they have the correct information to pass onto you."
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Having been a GP in Dubbo for the past 19 years, Dr Chua said the western community was 'very dear to her heart'.
"What has unfolded over the past 3 week with the delta strain of the virus coming to our community has been very worrying indeed.
"We know that it is very contagious, so much so that if someone in a house catches the virus, then the rest of the people in that house in most cases will catch the virus."
She said it had been 'excellent' to see so many people in the community coming forward to get their jabs, but we needed to see more and more of that to happen.
Currently in Dubbo 69 per cent of the population has received their first dose of a vaccine, while 26.3 per cent has received both doses.
Dr Chua also had a warning to residents about information circulating on social media, saying instead they needed to talk to a trusted professional.
"Talk to your trusted health professionals, that may be your GP, or a trusted nurse, a specialist, or an allied health person. Please talk to the right people to get the right information.
"[Covid-19 is] now being called a disease of the unvaccinated.
"I want to see first nations people safe from this virus, I want to see entire families kept safe, and I want to see you kept from having to go into hospital.
"Please get the jabs," she urged.
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