As a member of the military for 12 years, Trevor Smith says he was more than used to his fair share of vaccinations.
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"Every time we got posted somewhere, we always got so many vaccines," Mr Smith said.
However, his most recent injection may have been the most important vaccine he has ever received, and certainly the one with the most fanfare involved.
The 89-year-old was one of the first people in Canberra to receive the COVID-19 jab as part of phase 1b of the vaccine rollout.
Unlike other vaccine recipients in phase 1a, who received their dose at the Garran Surge Centre, Mr Smith received his dose at the YourGP@Crace clinic.
The Gungahlin clinic was one of 18 across the ACT that will be involved in the first week of the phase 1b rollout.
All up, more than 1000 GPs will be involved in the first week of the 1b rollout, which is expected to increase to more than 4000 in a month's time as the rollout progresses.
Mr Smith was the first of an expected 1000 people to receive the vaccine this week at the Crace GP clinic alone.
"The vaccine was the light at the end of the tunnel," Mr Smith said.
"The pandemic was quite frightening, the most frightening thing I've seen happen, having lived through World War II as a child.
"The vaccine was quite normal and I had no problem with it. I was happy to have it."
The federal government has said an estimated 6 million people will be eligible for the vaccines as part of phase 1b.
They include Australians aged over 70, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders aged over 55, emergency service workers and people with a disability or pre-existing medical condition.
Multiple GP clinics across the ACT reported a surge in calls to book appointments in the wake of the vaccine being made available to more people, which prompted doctors to call for people to be patient for their vaccine dose.
Doctor at YourGP@Crace Mel Deery said the clinic was booked out for vaccine appointments but the main issue with the rollout was the availability of the doses.
"With limited supply, there's understandably a slow start to the rollout, and a lot of people want the AstraZeneca vaccine quickly," Dr Deery said.
"We've got about 1000 doses for the week, but we had a small rollout on Monday of about 50.
"We have one of the larger allocations [of vaccine doses] while others are quite small and limited to how many patients that it can be provided to."
An announcement on which GPs will be added to the list of participating clinics for the vaccine rollout is expected to be made in coming days.
It's expected there'll be 73 clinics in the ACT alone that will be administering doses.
Some pharmacies will also be participating.
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