Orange Hospital's frontline workers welcomed the news they will begin receiving COVID-19 jabs next week, with emergency department nursing staff confirmed to be some of the first to get vaccinated from Monday onward.
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Emergency nursing staff are among the highest priority groups for the next stage of the vaccine roll-out's first phase, which comes a month after aged and disability-care workers and residents in Orange started receiving jabs.
Western NSW Local Health District confirmed the roll-out's extension to regional frontline workers will utilise the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which has become available since the national roll-out began with only the Pfizer vaccine in February.
We want to make sure we're vaccinated not only to protect ourselves but also to protect the patients that come in.
- Orange Hospital emergency department nursing unit manager Mim Eaton
Orange Hospital emergency department nursing unit manager Mim Eaton said she and her staff are 'excited' to receive their first doses, and not just for their own protection.
"We are very excited, to be able to have that overall protection will be fantastic," she said.
"It's incredibly important, we want to make sure we're vaccinated not only to protect ourselves but also to protect the patients that come in who are susceptible to disease.
"And, of course, it's so important for us to protect our families because we don't want to be taking it home to them either and to protect the community as well."
Fixed vaccination clinics will take bookings for those eligible in Orange and Dubbo from Monday, March 22 onward and two mobile clinics are expected to be in operation that day too.
Those mobile units will visit smaller facilities around the region in the coming weeks, with Bathurst's clinic to open the following day on Tuesday, March 23.
While the most at-risk groups like emergency nurses are eligible from Monday onward, other healthcare workers will be included in phase 1b of the national vaccine roll-out.
Ms Eaton and her staff were among the frontline and healthcare workers who toiled tirelessly throughout the pandemic, she lauded the amount of support that was given throughout the process too.
"We never had concerns from a personal protection point of view, we were very well prepared in those terms," she said.
"The only real concern we had was that we didn't know what was coming. We knew something was, we could see it in Sydney and around the world but we didn't know when or if it would hit Orange, or how hard.
"We were very stressed trying to anticipate that when we didn't know what to expect, but we were so lucky to have incredible support from our executive team, the doctors and all our nursing staff."
The logistics involved in the delivery of vaccinations cannot be underestimated and Western NSW LHD chief executive Scott McLachlan said in those terms, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will be an advantage.
"Both the current vaccines are very effective and Oxford/AstraZeneca offers advantages for our district given the challenges of distance," he said.
"We all want the vaccination program to be a success. We're fortunate to have the vaccine available and it will be a relief for our healthcare workers to have this extra layer of protection."
Orange Hospital's director of pharmacy Maggie Steventon said she's confident all the processes involved - from transportation of the vaccines all the way through to handling and delivery - will be completed effectively.
"It's all very regimented and I think we'll be fine," she said.
"The vaccine is so very important, even though we may not have felt the impact of COVID-19 the way some of the rest of the world has, we've been very privileged in that way.
"Once the world opens up though, it's going to be a bit different so in those terms it's very important to get our vaccinations going and begin to give people the protection that we're looking for."
Western NSW LHD has now gone 232 days without a confirmed case of COVID-19 while NSW recorded one new, locally-acquired case earlier this week, snapping a 55-day streak without any.
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