Health experts have called for a major education drive to help improve COVID-19 vaccination rates for vulnerable people living in remote NT communities.
In some of the Territory's remote Aboriginal communities, fewer than 10 per cent of people are fully vaccinated.
Australian Medical Association NT president Robert Parker said more needed to be done to improve these rates before the Top End wet season made accessing remote communities difficult.
"There obviously needs to be a very strong education campaign," Dr Parker said.
"It should be happening now because there are various variants of COVID around — we're all aware of what's happening in Sydney and Melbourne with the Delta variant and the potential for spread."
Figures released this week show significant gaps in the vaccination rates between urban and remote parts of the NT.
Dr Parker said considering the pre-existing pressures on the NT's hospital system, all remote Aboriginal residents should be vaccinated before the Territory re-opens its borders.
"We should be aiming at towards 100 per cent for all adults in Indigenous communities," he said.
Australian Indigenous Doctors' Association vice-president Simone Raye, a Bardi Jabbir Jabbir woman and a practising GP based in Darwin, agreed that vaccination rates needed to be high before borders reopen.
She said 90-95 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should be inoculated before restrictions eased.
She said that target was achievable with collaboration with communities and elders.
"Governments must be ambitious in protecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities from COVID," Dr Raye said.
"We absolutely have to ramp up our efforts to get people vaccinated in remote communities.
Dr Raye is calling for increased efforts to fight vaccine misinformation.
She wants specialist teams to be deployed in remote regions to help communities "understand and trust mass vaccination campaigns".
"We need to understand that vaccines are safe, how they work in our bodies, that side effects and risks are [less] than getting COVID," Dr Raye said.
"We need to do that carefully, and not scare people."
But La Trobe University epidemiologist Hassan Vally said it would be unrealistic to have 100 per cent vaccination coverage as the threshold for the re-opening of borders.
"Clearly we have to aim for a really high vaccination rate to protect people, and in particular to protect Indigenous communities," Dr Vally
"[But] the reality is that we're not going to get to 100 per cent."
Dr Vally said other measures should continue to be used to help keep people safe if vaccination rates remained low in some places, such as restricting movement into the communities.
NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner agreed that vaccination rates, especially in remote areas, needed to be as high as possible.
"We need as many Territorians as possible to get vaccinated," he said.
"I can guarantee that 100 per cent of eligible Territorians will have the chance to get vaccinated."
The Doherty Institute is refining modelling for different jurisdictions and specific populations like remote Aboriginal communities at the request of the National Cabinet.
This work is yet to be finalised.
