Medical teams are going door-to-door to get jabs in arms in western New South Wales communities and get its last 10-20 per cent of people vaccinated.
Australian Medical Assistance Teams (AUSMAT) have been deployed to visit vulnerable parts of the region where an outbreak continues to spread, mostly through the Aboriginal population.
The teams are used to being deployed internationally to assist with humanitarian crises.
Mission lead Tarun Weeramanthri said they will visit many remote communities over the three-week mission.
More than two-thirds of COVID cases in the region are in the Indigenous population.
Vaccination rates for Indigenous Australians nationwide sit below 20 per cent and health officials consider the group's vaccination a "priority" because of their vulnerability to the virus.
In Dubbo the Aboriginal vaccination figure is less than 10 per cent, despite the town – which has almost 500 cases – being the epicentre of the country's biggest regional outbreak.
The AUSMAT effort comes on top of vaccination hubs being offered by the Australian Defence Force, Royal Flying Doctor Service, and local and Aboriginal health services.
"We're essentially trying to get house-to-house in communities of hard-to-reach people who may be particularly vulnerable to COVID and make sure they've been offered vaccination," Dr Weeramanthri said.
Vaccine-hesitant targeted
One in 10 people in Wilcannia, a small town near Broken Hill, have the virus.
More than 60 per cent of the 600 people that live there are Aboriginal.
Vaccination rates in the town have slowly increased over recent weeks, with between 20 and 29 per cent of the population now fully vaccinated.
The team has visited the community, where they spent three days last week, and have turned up in Forbes, Nyngan, and Peak Hill over recent days.
Dr Weeramanthri said they are encountering some vaccine hesitancy.
"Some people don't want to be vaccinated. There's the usual myths that go around, we can convince some people," he said.
"Often people will want to be vaccinated but just haven't been able to get to the clinic for one reason or another."
If they agree, someone can be vaccinated on the spot, right outside their home.
Hundreds of people have already benefited from their services.
"We might do 50 or so vaccinations, but that's a really important 50 people, and those people are just as important as the first 50 who can rock up to the vaccination clinics themselves," Dr Weeramanthri said.
They are now on route to Goodooga and Weilmoringle to boost vaccination rates in those communities.
Case numbers drop, so does testing
The Western New South Wales Local Health District (WNSWLHD) recorded a welcome drop in case numbers off the back of a record high of 54 yesterday.
But LHD chief Scott McLachlan said it was "not a time to be reassured".
Dubbo remains the epicentre, recording 18 of the 29 new cases.
The virus continues to spread right across the region with Bourke picking up another three, and another two each in Blayney, Narromine, and Bathurst.
Another person in both Mudgee and Walgett tested positive.
The concern for health authorities is that about a quarter of people who test positive each day have been infectious in the community.
Meanwhile, testing rates remain worryingly low, with little more than 3,000 people getting swabbed over the past day — a big drop from 10,000 a few weeks ago.
Virus fragments have been detected in the sewage at Warren and Molong.
Anyone in those towns is being told to be particularly vigilant for symptoms because there are no known cases in those areas.
