By Mikayla van Loon
With the aim of getting more people vaccinated by December, EACH’s Lilydale Covid-19 vaccination clinic has moved to Kilsyth Basketball Stadium.
Vaccination service manager for all of EACH’s Covid-19 vaccination clinics, Di Collins said the demand for vaccines at Lilydale had increased so rapidly that they decided to relocate.
“It gives us an ability to increase the amount of booths we have to vaccinate in,” she said.
By increasing the number of vaccine booths, Ms Collins said the Kilsyth clinic can vaccinate 480 to 500 people a day, with the vision of gradually increasing that to 1000 a day.
For the time being, the Kilsyth clinic has reached capacity with eight to 10 booths going at any one time, meaning 48 to 50 people are vaccinated every hour.
“We’re really grateful that people around the Lilydale area have been really great. Ever since we opened people have come forward to be vaccinated so that’s fantastic,” Ms Collins said.
“We’ve been at capacity since we opened and every time we grow, we can grow some more but it’s been really great to see that people have come to get vaccinated.”
Although staff have been under pressure to vaccinate as many people as possible, Ms Collins said EACH has taken every step to make sure staff are looked after.
“We stagger our staffing, so our staff are fine and we make sure that they’re looked after, as well as the fact that we get people vaccinated.
“I think we’ll be doing this at least until December, so we have to look after our staff.”
Ms Collins wanted to thank the local community for being so willing to get vaccinated and for their patience as EACH works through every appointment.
“The community’s been fantastic. Even when we were at Lilydale, down on the school site, everyone was understanding, when they had to sometimes queue and the staff have been brilliant.
“They’ve worked really hard to try and make sure that the community, often their local community, is vaccinated.”
The clinic has just opened more bookings for six weeks time but Ms Collins said they will go quickly.
