The head of one of Central Australia's key Aboriginal health bodies has renewed calls for a "vaccine economy" in the Northern Territory, where access to all venues would require patrons to have two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Chief Medical Officer at Central Australian Aboriginal Congress Dr John Boffa said first-dose vaccination rates among Indigenous clients had improved by 10 per cent across the region in the last fortnight.
According to recent data from the Australian Immunisation Register, 72.5 per cent of Congress clients had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in Alice Springs.
In the MacDonnell Local Government Area, that figure was almost 78 per cent, while it was still below 70 per cent in the Central Desert LGA.
Dr Boffa said demand for the vaccine increased alongside the latest outbreak affecting Katherine and nearby remote communities, Binjari and Rockhole, but it had started to wane in recent days.
"At the rate we're going, in two weeks' time we'll be above 80 per cent first dose but it looks like it might drop off," Dr Boffa said.
'COVID will be here soon'
Dr Boffa warned that although the situation in Katherine appeared to be coming under control, the arrival of COVID-19 in Central Australia would be inevitable when the Northern Territory opened its borders on December 20.
"Obviously we're taking more risks as time goes on. But people need to know if they're unvaccinated, those risks become much more serious than for the people who are vaccinated," he said.
Dr Boffa said a person is not fully vaccinated until two weeks after their second dose.
He said, at the current rate, double vaccination numbers could reach 70 per cent in four weeks, "if we're lucky" — well below the 90 per cent threshold recommended by the Doherty Institute modelling to stop an outbreak spreading.
Dr Boffa urged the NT government to introduce more restrictions for unvaccinated people in line with the borders opening in December.
"Show you have to be double vaccinated now. Not next year.
"That's the only missing piece of the jigsaw ... it's a little bit of a shove, but it works, and we've seen it work in every part of the country that's done it."
Dr Boffa said it was crucial demand for vaccines did not lose momentum, especially given the usual decline in health workers in the NT over summer.
"Christmas, January, is when our workforce is at its lowest," he said.
"And we won't have the same workforce on deck as we normally would have."
