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Up to 30 Indigenous communities across Australia could receive a rapid surge in coronavirus vaccinations as part of communications strategies to drive up poor immunisation rates.
The national rollout has been savaged for leaving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people behind.
Just 21.86 per cent of the Indigenous population aged over 16 has been fully vaccinated, while 39 per cent have received their first dose.
Australia has fully vaccinated 36.43 per cent of the wider population while 60.53 have received one dose.
Vaccine rollout coordinator John Frewen will on Friday unveil a plan to accelerate Indigenous vaccinations at a meeting of state and territory leaders.
Lieutenant General Frewen has nominated 10 remote and 20 non-remote communities to be involved but will not reveal their location before showing the national cabinet.
“The list at the moment are the communities where there is the greatest gap between the current national first-dose, second-dose vaccination rates,” he told a Senate committee. “But also where there is the greatest number of individuals in those communities as well.”
The proposed surge would involve community leaders and Indigenous ambassadors over the next four weeks.
Lt Gen Frewen said a specific communications strategy would be designed to combat vaccine hesitancy.
He said western NSW – where emergency teams were deployed after an outbreak infected Indigenous people – provided a blueprint.
“We have been making up some very good ground over at least the last month but you can see there is a gap,” he said.
Critics have blasted the federal government for failing to ensure Indigenous vaccination rates were higher despite being in a high priority phase of the six-month-old rollout.
Labor’s Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Linda Burney said immunisation coverage was woeful in some parts of Australia.
“No matter where you go, apart from the state of Victoria, the vaccination rates of First Nations people are way below the vaccination rates of the rest of the community,” she said. “Hesitancy is not an excuse for the federal government who is responsible for vaccination rollout.”
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