ACT government undertakes research on vaccine hesitancy

Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the government would ramp up public health messages encouraging vaccine take-up once every eligible Canberran has had the opportunity to receive a vaccination.

The research will look at public health messages, and will assess how the messages can contribute to a person's decision to get a Covid vaccine.

"There will come a point in the vaccine rollout when the most willing, the people who are most focused on vaccination will have already been vaccinated, Mr Barr said.

"We will then also need to be looking at ways to get the vaccine to people who are somewhat reluctant.

"We're doing the planning work on that now, knowing that time is coming with the increased supply.

"Right now our constraint is available vaccination supply but we hope we will be at a point where we will have sufficient vaccines and it will then be a case of how we can get as many jabs in arms and we'll look at a variety of different things to achieve that."

Mr Barr said national research showed about 12 to 17 per cent of the population expressed hesitancy towards the Covid vaccine.

"Based on the 90-plus per cent first dose take up levels for over 70s in the ACT, we can conclude that the hesitancy is more common in people under 70 years of age," he said.

Mr Barr said the government would consider partnerships with businesses and the federal government to deliver vaccines, an example could be the use of mobile vaccine clinics. But this would happen once supply increases.

"I know there are some people who can't yet access vaccines, we are working as hard as we can with the available supply to get as many people vaccinated once more vaccine supply becomes available," he said.

"We will want to have as many places that 16 to 29 year olds can get vaccinated as possible."

The ACT government has planned to open another mass vaccination clinic when supply increases. The government expects Pfizer supply to increase next month to about 15,000 doses a week. This will grow to at least 17,700 doses by October and December.

Even more vaccines are expected after the Therapeutic Goods Administration approved the use of the Moderna vaccine in Australia on Monday.

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There will be 1 million doses sent to pharmacies in September.

Meanwhile, the ACT government has not made a final decision on its contingency plans for Floriade.

The annual flower festival in Commonwealth Park will have to be scaled back due to Sydney's Covid outbreak. A government spokeswoman said the festival would be targeted at Canberrans.

"Contingency planning for Floriade is continuing," the spokeswoman said.

"Given the challenging COVID-19 situation interstate, it will clearly not be a major tourism event.

"The government is seeking to deliver the best possible local event.

"Events ACT is working closely with the office of the ACT Chief Health Officer to finalise the Covid-safe arrangements for the event."

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