Pharmacists are hitting another bump in the road with increasing uncertainty on whether vaccines for under 12s will arrive on time.
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Yesterday the ACT government announced their acceleration of the COVID-19 vaccination program through expanded capacity at the AIS Arena and the reopening of the Canberra Airport vaccination hub, with Chief Minister Andrew Barr saying "if you're a parent or carer of a child aged five to 11, book them in for their first dose."
However, pharmacies across the ACT are reporting they have no idea when the doses for five- to 11-year-old children are arriving so have not opened bookings for the age group.
Capital Chemist O'Connor owner Grace Lee said her pharmacy is currently in a bit of a grey area when it comes to getting young children vaccinated.
"We won't open our booking option for five- to 11-year-old kids until we have stock," Ms Lee said.
"If we were to say bookings are starting on the 10th and I don't have stock it's going to be a lot of phone calls made and I'm sure parents won't appreciate being messed around too much."
Ainslie Pharmacy technician Alex Brown said every day they hope the delivery is vaccines for young children as they have people booked in but no supply yet.
"We are entirely at the behest of the government allocating vaccines and for the responsibility that we have to get community children vaccinated it's a little bit stressful," Ms Brown said.
Red Hill pharmacist Julian Lam also said he has no idea one when they will be receiving stock and "people are calling every five minutes asking."
While Evatt pharmacy assistant Angela Riach said it is "becoming frustrating" with the lack of communication from the government.
ACT Pharmacy Guild branch president Simon Blacker said the logistics and timing of delivering vaccinations is "a bit sporadic."
"Each introduction of new vaccines in the rollout the federal government tries to equally distribute them, so we've learnt there's a little bit of variability in the date ranges when vaccines arrive," Mr Blacker said.
"It was suggested that perhaps vaccines would arrive closer to the 20th and so with that uncertainty pharmacies are probably going to have a slower start to the pediatric roll out but once stock does arrive pharmacies will get into it.
"Most pharmacies will only get 100 doses to start with, so the first drop will only be about two weeks worth of stock and then you'll be reordering."
President of Professional Pharmacists Australia Geoff March said the "preparedness and proactiveness of the federal government during the vaccine rollout has been missing."
"All this does is place huge pressure on pharmacists as patients expect to be able to secure a booking and workers are simply not in a position to do so, having been left in the dark by government," Mr March said.
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The Department of Health confirmed a shipment of 2 million Pfizer doses for five- to 11-year-olds arrived in Australia on December 19 and have completed TGA testing.
"The doses are now approved for use and are being distributed through the primary care network and state clinics ahead of the commencement of the program on 10 January," a government spokesperson said.
"The government has secured sufficient supply of the 5-11 year doses to offer all children a first dose by the end of January."
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