The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has announced an extra 330,000 Covid-19 vaccines will be directed to Victoria as he calls for people to seize the “moment of momentum” and get a jab.
The commitment of extra doses, announced on Sunday, will see another 115,000 AstraZeneca vaccines sent to Victoria for each of the next two weeks, along with 100,000 more Pfizer doses for three weeks from 14 June.
The extra 100,000 Pfizer doses will enable an additional 50,000 Victorians to be vaccinated after the state has worked through existing inventories.
“That is a recognition of the very strong work being done here in Victoria and the strong demand,” Hunt said.
“We want to see other states and territories have that same degree of public support and confidence. It is going well around the country but always we push for more.”
The pledge comes after Hunt reported that a record week of vaccinations had been achieved in just six days, with 772,752 the new high. On Saturday, more than 88,000 people were vaccinated.
In total, 5,016,000 vaccinations have taken place.
“The vaccine program is accelerating, Australians are stepping forward, and as supply becomes available, the public is stepping up and doing their part of the job.
“Now at the moment of momentum, is the time we ask Australians to keep coming forward to be vaccinated. You’re doing an amazing job. But please keep booking, please keep attending, please come forward for your first doses, please come forward for your second doses,” Hunt said.
He said more than 58% of over-70s in Victoria were now vaccinated, with 42% of all people over 50 in the state so far receiving the jab.
Earlier on Sunday, the Labor leader Anthony Albanese turned the focus to quarantine facilities, saying the government must immediately step up to stop the country from plunging into regular lockdowns.
Following the commonwealth’s decision last week to push ahead with federal support for a new purpose-built quarantine facility in Victoria, Albanese said more needed to be built in other states before the next federal election.
“This needs to be fixed now, not wait until after the next federal election which will occur perhaps as late as May of next year,” he told Sky News.
“We can’t afford to keep having these lockdowns.”
The government has so far resisted a Queensland proposal for a new quarantine centre in Toowoomba, while the New South Wales government has flagged the possibility of a new quarantine facility in its state – to be “owned and operated by the commonwealth”.
Hunt said the prime minister Scott Morrison had been in contact with the NSW government, and had confirmed that the state “at this point” was not seeking any support for any additional quarantine facility.
The federal government will spend $200m on construction of the new facility to be located either at Avalon or Mickleham, but the Victorian government will fund the operating costs.
On Saturday, the Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told the party’s state conference that what the government was proposing was a “no-brainer” that would help provide safety and certainty.
“We are not proposing construction of an international space station,” she said.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has been critical of the Queensland proposal, saying the government had received scant detail until late last week, and raising concerns about its suitability given its distance from Brisbane.
Further proposals may yet be considered by the government, but they must comply with new criteria: being close to an international airport that regularly accepts international commercial flights; within an hour’s drive of a tertiary hospital; commonwealth-owned; and in addition to the existing hotel quarantine system.
Albanese said the government should have acted last year.
“That was the best time to do this, the best next time is right now.”
The opposition’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, said the latest Victorian lockdown was the result of the government’s failure on quarantine.
“All roads lead back to a failure in managing quarantine in this country. Hotel quarantine, which was meant to be a stop-gap measure … these are facilities which are not fit for purpose, where you have a single ventilation system in one building which is leading to people contracting the disease in those hotels and leading to the outbreaks that we have then experienced,” Marles told the ABC’s Insiders program.
“That’s the issue and that’s the issue that is facing Victoria now, and that is fundamentally a failure of Scott Morrison and his government.”
On Sunday, the Victorian government announced that two new locally acquired Covid cases had been detected overnight from almost 30,000 tests, along with six others in hotel quarantine, taking the total number of active infections in the state to 85.
Greater Melbourne is now in its second week of lockdown, as authorities try to determine the source of the state’s highly contagious Delta strain cluster, believed to have come from another hotel quarantine leak.
It would be the 22nd leak from hotel quarantine since the system was put in place last year.
