Australia's first drive-through vaccine hub opens at former Bunnings

Australia's first drive-through Covid vaccination clinic will open at a former Bunnings Warehouse in Victoria.

The hub will do a soft launch by invitation-only on Sunday, but will be open for bookings from Monday.

It will be located at the former Bunnings Warehouse at 149 Barries Road in Melton, in Melbourne's northwest.

The announcement came as Victoria reported 11 new locally acquired cases on Sunday.

"You book, you drive up, roll down your window, roll up your sleeve, get a jab, it's that easy," Department of Health's Covid Response Deputy Secretary Naomi Bromley said.

"This site is being made available by the Victorian government by Bunnings for a peppercorn fee."

Initially Pfizer will only be available at this site, but that vaccine and AstraZeneca will be administered at the location from next week.

About 50 or 60 cars will go through the drive-through clinic on Sunday to "make sure everything is going to flow really smoothly when we open up".

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But to start 10 cars will drive through at a time, Ms Bromley said.

Overall the aim is for the clinic to do 10,000 vaccines a week.

"That's probably pretty conservative and to be honest probably a bit more limited this week by how much Pfizer we can allocate to that site," she said.

"As we learn more about this model we'll expect that more will be able to go through that site and hopefully we'll have other drive-through sites in the system as well."

The new clinic is being run by Western Health.

"We were pleased to assist the Victorian Government with mobile testing at our stores last year and we’re really pleased to be able to play a small part in the government’s vaccination rollout by providing access to our former Melton store," Bunnings managing director Mike Schneider said.

"Accelerating community vaccinations is vital to the Covid recovery and we're actively exploring other ways we can support the rollout.

"We are strongly encouraging our own team to take up Covid-19 vaccinations and we’re providing them with up to six hours' paid leave to attend appointments."

Under 40s now allowed AstraZeneca vaccine in Victoria

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has also announced the AstraZeneca vaccine will now be available for 18 to 39-year-olds across the state.

Additionally children aged 12-15 with underlying health conditions or of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander decent will also be allowed to receive Pfizer doses.

"There are many appointments available, go online," Mr Andrews urged of anyone considering the AstraZeneca offer.

With the best part of 200,000 vaccinations on hand, anyone within the age group willing to provide informed consent would be able to receive a first AZ dose and a second 12 weeks later, he said.

Echoing the premier encouragement, Professor Sutton said: "I'm a 52-year-old bloke. If I were 25 and AstraZeneca was the only vaccine available to me today, I would get it."

Victoria administered 17,360 vaccine doses in the 24 hours to Saturday evening and conducted 38,179 tests.

No decision made on lockdown yet despite reports

With 29 cases recorded on Saturday, there was concern Victoria would be forced to extend its current week-long lockdown beyond Thursday.

However Mr Andrews said on Sunday no decision had been made and he would immediately announce it when one was.

Before then, he said he remained concerned by the two mystery cases behind the latest outbreaks.

"We've just got to monitor this every single day," he said.

"We'll be in lockdown no longer than we need to be and we just have to take this one day at a time."

Victoria added 11 locally-acquired infections to its caseload on Sunday, all of them linked to previously reported cases although they were not in quarantine while infectious.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said Victoria's latest cases were all linked to Melbourne's Hobsons Bay cluster seeded by a teacher at the Al-Taqwa College.

He said cases at Flemington's Mount Alexander College and the Kiewa Secondary Boys Campus of Ilim College in Dallas were undergoing the same successful testing program conducted at Al-Taqwa College.

with AAP

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