COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:48): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question about the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: At the beginning of the pandemic, truck drivers who drove interstate were classified as essential workers, and rightly so, to ensure goods and services were able to be maintained across our state borders. They were forced to have weekly COVID tests, get an essential travel identification number for entry into South Australia, get cross-border passes to enter other states, and in the early stages were even penalised if they sat in a roadhouse to eat their meals. It appears that may have all changed now, with walk-in vaccinations, and our essential truck drivers are being categorised differently.

I have been contacted by a frustrated transport worker who is trying desperately to organise a walk-in vaccination, but his pleas are falling on deaf ears. He rightly points out that not all transport workers have a regular roster, so booking an appointment weeks in advance for a vaccination won't work.

He has tried repeatedly calling the 1800 COVID information line to ask for advice, but after 40 minutes frustratedly hangs up. All he wants to do is be able to walk into a vaccination hub on his first day off, get vaccinated and then return home so he can immediately rest in case he has a mild reaction to the vaccination and then resume driving after his days off. My question to the minister is:

1. If the vaccination hubs are taking walk-ins for aged-care workers and other essential workers, why aren't they doing the same for our essential transport workers?

2. Will you direct the vaccination hubs to allow walk-in appointments by essential transport workers and, if not, what advice do you have for this constituent and the hundreds more like him to receive on-the-spot vaccination?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:50): The first point I would make is the groups that SA Health has been progressively opening up to have been bringing forward the priority cohorts as identified under the national vaccination road map. That road map is informed by clinical advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation and, as I understand it, also advice from the AHPPC, the Australian health promotion committee.

In that regard, we have, if you like, taken on responsibility to assist the commonwealth in some of its priority cohorts. For example, disability workers and disability residents in commonwealth disability services, NDIS services, are the commonwealth responsibility but we are opening up our clinics to be able to be booked by those cohorts.

I should clarify that these cohorts don't correlate with the essential workers in relation to border controls or COVID testing. The primary basis for the priority cohorts is the risk of the particular person contracting COVID-19 or the risk of the person having significant adverse consequences if they do contract COVID-19. In terms of the point the honourable member makes that transport workers would find it difficult to be able to book within the time frames that the current booking system allows because of the irregularity of their hours, that's a very good point and I will certainly raise that with SA Health.

My understanding is that right around Australia the primary means of engaging with vaccine candidates is through appointment. That is primarily to make sure we can, in an orderly way, deal with the flow. It's very important that we have orderly flows through the clinics, that we don't have crowding and, to be frank, make sure we also minimise wastage. If we had significant numbers of walk-ins it is much more likely that you would have unused vials at the end of the day.

Having said that, we are looking at some limited walk-ins. For example, in relation to the period during the Adelaide Show my understanding is that that clinic is going to try walk-ins. The honourable member refers to the Thursday night session, which is at all three metropolitan clinics. Tomorrow's focus will be on residential aged-care workers, I should stress, not disability workers.

We are very interested to see how tonight's clinics go. It may well give us an opportunity to explore how we can add walk-ins to the schedule, and it may well be, as the honourable member suggests, there might be walk-ins made available for occupational groups for whom appointments don't work. I thank the honourable member for raising the issue and I will certainly take it up with SA Health.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Pangallo has a supplementary.