By Danielle Kutchel
A new vaccination pop-up has launched in Casey as officials race to get ahead of rising cases in the municipality.
A vaccination centre has been set up this weekend at Casey Fields to help boost Casey’s vaccination rates.
The site opened on Friday 15 October and will run until Sunday 17 October.
It comes as Victoria dipped back below the 2000 mark, recording 1993 cases on Saturday 16 October.
Seven Victorians died due to Covid in the past 24 hours, including a woman in her 60s from Casey.
Victoria’s Covid Commander Jeroen Weimar visited the Casey Fields vaccination centre on Saturday 16 October and told media the state was making good progress on its vaccination program.
He was joined by Cranbourne MP Pauline Richards, Bass MP Jordan Crugnale and community leaders Andrew Gai and Meha Sivarasa.
Over five million Victorians have now received their first dose of a vaccine, he said.
As of Monday 11 October, 54.2 per cent of Casey residents aged over 15 had had both doses of the vaccine.
This was behind the state vaccination rate, which was 60.4 per cent on the same day.
Mr Weimar said Casey’s lagging vaccination rate and surge in cases were a concern.
Casey now has 1863 active cases of the virus, after recording another 191 in the past 24 hours.
Mr Weimar said there had been “significant growth” in cases across Hampton Park, Cranbourne North, Clyde and Narre Warren, as well as Dandenong, Keysborough, Noble Park, Frankston and Cardinia, with household-to-household contact driving transmission.
He urged those who were not yet vaccinated to “please get that done”.
“Here in the south east, the second dose vaccination rate is rising steeply; we’re focusing on the remaining parts of the community where more work needs to be done,” he said.
He said health authorities were targeting 11 postcodes across the south east where the first dose rate is still below 80 per cent, with more pop-up vaccination sites planned.
Asked whether Casey had been left behind by health authorities as they focused on outbreaks in the northern and western suburbs, Mr Weimar said that was not the case and said Greater Dandenong and Casey had been identified for many weeks as areas of concern, with boosts to the vaccination rollouts there.
He said locals could expect to see a continued surge in additional vaccination resources and teams to support those in the lower-vaccinated postcodes to “get the job done”.
With the prospect of eased restrictions on the very near horizon, Mr Weimar urged residents to “hold on a bit longer” while vaccination rates increase.
Meanwhile, local Facebook groups are alive with discussion about whether the Department of Health is behind in its identification of exposure sites, with many sites only appearing on the Department’s website several days after being exposed.
Mr Weimar said the contact tracing approach was being “refined”.
“Particularly now that we’re in lockdown, most of the exposure sites are really places that are under control,” he said, adding that places where the Department was confident of contacting all attendees were not published.
“People shouldn’t expect to see every time there’s a positive case…hundreds of exposure sites.
“When we’re putting sites up, we want to make sure we’ve got the details right.
“Exposure sites can only be identified once we’ve found a positive case and done the contact tracing with them, and they’ve identified what their movements have been,” he explained.
“There’s a fair bit of work. It’s not unusual to see an exposure site being listed where it relates to activity from four or five days ago, given someone has had to get tested and share that information.”
For more information about getting tested or getting vaccinated for Covid-19, visit coronavirus.vic.gov.au
