Mass vaccination - an inside view

This somewhat reluctant vaccinee was one of several thousand to turn up today at NSW Health's mass COVID-19 vaccination centre at Olympic Park. We followed her progress through the system. And it was all rather smooth and impressive.

You make your online booking and turn up somewhere near the selected time. It's a short walk from either the train station or Car Park 3. You negotiate a small maze and a check-in stage.

Then there's perhaps 5 minutes before your number comes up.

 

 

 

A very pleasant nurse then runs through a whole lot of health questions, before running a needle into your arm. So maybe 5 minutes there.

And of course there's the obligatory 15 minute post-jab sit-down, so you can solve the Herald's Target puzzle.

All quite impressive really. Well done Gladys. If the federal government had been in charge of this place, they'd still be holding meetings about what colour direction signs they should put up, and which donor company should be given a few billion to run it.

For the record, you can get either AstraZeneca or Pfizer there, and the eligibility rules are rather more flexible than publicly stated, if you have a cooperative GP and knowledge of the 'special' booking site.

A Castle Hill coffee morning and the "I don't hold a hose" Prime Minister

 

What's going on here then? We were in the Castle Mall shopping centre for our Sunday morning coffee, and there was an excited crowd outside the Medical Centre. Inside was an even more excited bunch of politicians, senior health executives, and the nation's media. It was the launch (pre-launch actually) of the country's COVID-19 vaccination programme.

 

When PM Scotty-from-Marketing went on holiday in Hawaii during the bushfire crises a year ago, he used the excuse of "I don't hold a hose!" Now that there's some good news re the COVID crisis, he's definitely wanting to be in on the action. I feel an election coming on.

Here's a Reuters video. Watch for the bit where our first vaccinee inadvertently(?) gives a disrespectful gesture to them all!

Click here: YouTube/Sky News video