Victoria health authorities have moved to reassure VCE students and their parents who mobbed the vaccination phone lines today all will have a dose reserved for them.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The first day of the VCE vaccination blitz led to 30,000 calls battering the priority phone lines aimed at getting all Victorian VCE students vaccinated before their first October exams.
The doses are set aside for you. Everyone who wants to get it done can get it done.
Victoria's COVID commander Jeroen Weimar made the guarantee when almost half the eligible students applied for a spot in the first morning.
"Can I just assure every VCE student, I've got one at home myself, there's a dose set aside for you, between 7 and 19th September, " he said on Monday.
"If you're a year 11 student taking a VCE subject, you can phone from Wednesday. We're trying to get the year 12s booked in. But you can book in today, tomorrow, Wednesday, as a year 12 student. There's no frantic rush.
"The doses are set aside for you. Everyone who wants to get it done can get it done."
RELATED COVERAGE: Certainty welcomed for Year 12 vaccination blitz
Health minister Martin Foley ruled out the possibility of students having walk-up access to the state hubs.
"We want, first and foremost, an orderly process and we don't want our state hubs to become centres of a new virus outbreak," Mr Foley said.
"So we need to manage people presenting in an orderly and timely manner.
"In terms of the phone system getting hammered first thing, we understand that that was the case and just goes to show the wild enthusiasm of this group to get vaccinated and get on with the important part of term 4 and their exams and we welcome that.
Understand things have eased up and I would encourage people to continue to try because the process is phone-based so we can specifically insert those 50,000ish young people and about 10,000 adult supervisors and teachers involved in the process in specific measures to get them through as quickly as possible."
Have you signed up to The Courier's variety of news emails? You can register below and make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in Ballarat.