Several GP clinics have been forced to cancel hundreds of vaccination appointments after being told thousands of additional Pfizer doses offered to them never existed.
Indigo Family Medical Centre, in the north-east Victorian town of Barnawartha, is just one of the clinics where staff say they were abused by patients when they had to call them to reschedule appointments.
"We were promised the vaccine," the clinic's nurse practitioner, Helen Barter, said.
"You're embarrassed, you have to ring all your patients and cancel them."
Ms Barter said she received an email from the Primary Health Network advising the clinic there was an oversupply of the vaccine and general practices could order extra doses on top of their regular allocations.
Sarkon Medical Centre also received the email and ordered an additional 4,200 vaccines that never arrived.
"It's disappointing because the Department of Health was not able to keep up with the promise of delivering such a big number of vaccines," practice principal Dr Priya Kondappan said.
Director of the practice Dr Niranjan Sarjapuram said, as a result, the clinic was forced to close for the week.
Community at risk
Sarkon Medical Centre was able to secure an additional 200 doses from other practices in the region to reduce the impact but other clinics were not as lucky.
Indigo Family Medical Centre is the only clinic within a 25-kilometre radius that is offering the vaccine.
General practitioner Dr Colin Cameron said the cancelled order left many vulnerable in the community at risk.
"We're a rural community. We have a lot of Aboriginal people here, we have a lot of people on the NDIS and elderly people who don't necessarily have the transport to drive 30 minutes into Wodonga," he said.
Dr Cameron said there was still a lot of hesitancy when it came to the AstraZeneca vaccine because of previous publicity around possible side effects.
No explanation
In a statement, the Department of Health said the National COVID Vaccine Taskforce was aware of the issue.
"The Taskforce is working with Primary Health Networks to try to identify any excess doses that can be re-diverted to these clinics to support them and minimise the impact on patients," the statement said.
No further explanation has been given to the clinics but they are hoping it does not happen again.
"I'm hoping it was probably just a glitch in the system, maybe a miscommunication … I'm hoping it's just a one-off," Dr Kondappan said.
