A milestone in the fight against COVID-19, March 22 marked one year since general practices stepped up to take on the challenge of protecting the community by assisting with the national vaccination program.
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Leading the charge were five local GP respiratory clinics at Picton, Mittagong, Campbelltown, Fairfield and Chester Hill.
The five Commonwealth-funded clinics have been supported by South Western Sydney Primary Health Network (SWSPHN) since they opened in 2020 as COVID-19 testing clinics for South Western Sydney residents.
The GP respiratory clinics and other selected general practices across the region began vaccinating as part of Phase 1b of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in March last year, in a commitment to further protect local residents.
Practice Principal of Picton GP Respiratory Clinic, Dr Anna Pham, said opening the clinic to vaccinations was a labour of love.
"My team's core value is to make a difference," she said.
"We are committed to helping our community safely navigate through the pandemic, through assisting with testing patients who have respiratory symptoms, providing education, and vaccination.
"It's been a challenging year; changes were happening on an almost daily basis but flexing with change is now second nature to us, we do it very effectively."
Since the clinic in Picton opened for vaccinations last year, there have been more than 21,300 jabs administered. The clinic's busiest day saw 1,200 vaccines administered over eight hours on a Sunday with only 10 staff on duty.
Peak demand from the community came in September and October at the height of the Delta wave.
"This year will see us learning to harmonise general practice work with respiratory work as we transition towards 'living with COVID'," Dr Pham said.
"Our focus is to continue working with chronic disease and maintain testing and vaccination clinic for as long as we are required to do so".
SWSPHN Chief Executive Officer, Dr Keith McDonald PhD, said he was proud to have such hardworking and dedicated teams helping to protect the South Western Sydney region.
"It's been great to see how the community has responded to the COVID-19 vaccination program. We're proud of the role the GP led Respiratory Clinics and general practices have played in making vaccinations easily accessible to the community," Dr McDonald said.
Since the vaccination program was extended to general practices and GP respiratory clinics last year, there have been 1,268,225 vaccines administered in general practices, and 68,055 at GP respiratory clinics. Further to this, 219,920 doses of the COVID-19 vaccination have been administered at pharmacies within the last 12 months.
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