As we have always done with the COVID-19 Vaccination Program, Monash Health responds to the needs of the community.
This includes demand for vaccination and protection against COVID-19, ensuring equitable supply and access to the vaccine, and ensuring Monash Health as a health service is best meeting the needs of the community and supporting its workforce.
Monash Health’s efforts to administer around 1 million COVID-19 vaccines has supported over 90% of those eligible in the community to be vaccinated and protected against COVID-19. As a result, we continue to see a natural decrease in the demand for vaccinations both in Monash Health’s vaccination clinics and across Victoria.
This decrease in demand means that currently only 10%, and falling, of our vaccination capacity across our clinics is being utilised.
We continue to see primary care, being GPs and pharmacies, become the primary providers of COVID-19 vaccinations, ensuring there is local access and supply.
We also recognise that our hospitals are experiencing an increasing number of patients needing urgent care while having to navigate substantial workforce challenges due to a rising number of our colleagues contracting COVID-19 or being required to isolate.
For these reasons, as we announced in March, it’s time to adjust and consolidate our vaccination clinic operations over coming weeks and months.
Monash Health will make the following changes to its COVID-19 vaccination clinics over the coming weeks:
- Progressively from 18 April – vaccination clinics to offer Pfizer and Paediatric Pfizer vaccines only
- Week commencing 25 April – all clinics to operate 5 days per week (days and hours available here)
- 29 April – close Monash Medical Centre COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic (COVID-19 vaccines to continue being offered to employees via Monash Immunisation)
- 14 May* – close Dandenong Plaza COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic
- 14 May* – close Cranbourne COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Centre
*Subject to change
As we scale down our vaccination clinics, there will continue to be free and local access to the COVID-19 vaccine for everyone aged 5 years and older through remaining clinics such as Sandown Racecourse, mobile vaccination clinics, and the large network of GPs and pharmacies.
Importantly, thank you to everyone in our amazing Vaccination Team. You have accomplished so much in the past year and protected many people from being hospitalised due to COVID-19. The community feedback for our vaccination clinics has always been overwhelmingly positive: a wonderful achievement, especially given needles are involved.
Approved by Martin Keogh and Professor Rhonda Stuart