It’s on! Eligible Aussies can get the Covid-19 vaccine from Monday

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy says workers and residents in aged care homes, as well as healthcare, border, and quarantine workers will be at the front of the queue when the national coronavirus vaccine rollout begins next week.

Speaking in a press conference on Thursday afternoon Murphy said the vaccine will be distributed from Monday, February 22, with workers and residents at 240 aged care facilities across the country the first to receive the jab.

It’s expected residents from 190 Australian towns will be eligible for the shot, with 16 Pfizer hubs established to help distribute to vaccine.

Murphy said Northern Territory towns Alice Springs, Farrer and Tiwi will be subject to the vaccine rollout from next week, while Weston and Narrabunda in the ACT will see the vaccine rolled out in certain facilities.

It will also be distributed in Sydney’s Blacktown and Penrith, as well as Gosford West and Orange in New South Wales. In Queensland, areas such as Aspley, Bundaberg, Cleveland, Mackay, among many others, will also have access to the jab. The same goes for Victorian towns Altona Meadows, Ballarat, Bendigo, Cranbourne, Dandenong.

In South Australia, Encounter Bay, Heathfield and Mount Barker will be some of the first areas to get the vaccine, while towns such as Bunbury, or Emu Point, near Albany, Kingsly, Mirrabooka, and Rockingham, among many others, in Western Australia will also be able to line up for a shot.

“The point of that is that right across Australia, every state and territory, rural and regional, and urban areas will be covered,” Murphy said. “It has to start somewhere and it has to finish somewhere, but this is the beginning of the process.”

He said that several Pfizer vaccination hubs will also be set up across the country. Some of these hubs will be set up at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in New South Wales, the Monash Medical Centre in Victoria, the Gold Coast University Hospital in Queensland, the Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia, Perth Children’s Hospital in Western Australia, the Royal Hobart Hospital in Tasmania, the Canberra Hospital in the ACT, and the Royal Darwin in the Northern Territory.

So far the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has approved two vaccines for use in Australia: the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine. The Australian Government has secured 10 million doses of the Pfizer jab and 53.8 million of the AstraZeneca jab.

Full list of Australian towns which will be subject to the vaccine rollout:

Pfizer vaccination hubs: