As few as one in 10 residents at one Canberran aged care home have received a fourth vaccine dose as COVID-19 outbreaks cause delays across the country, new data shows.
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The Albanese Labor government this week released new insights into vaccination rates inside Australian aged centres, in a bid to boost uptake among Australia's most vulnerable.
A winter COVID-19 wave is spreading in more than a thousand aged care residences across the country, including 14 of 26 in the ACT as of Friday.
Aged Care Minister Anika Wells said outbreaks were largely behind large disparities in vaccination rates, with some Canberran centres vaccinating well below the rate of others just kilometres away.
That was also exacerbated by a three-month waiting period between third and fourth doses, with some residents yet to pass that threshold, she said.
"If there's an outbreak in the centre, the vaccine team can't come back in until the outbreak's [over]. Some centres have had numerous rolling outbreaks," she said on Tuesday.
"That's why some facilities have great figures and some facilities are well behind."
The new data breaks the ACT down into six regions - Belconnen, Woden Valley, South Canberra, North Canberra, Tuggeranong, and Weston Creek - with fourth-dose rates trailing behind in the latter two.
As of Monday, across Tuggeranong's three aged care centres and Weston Creek's five centres, just 50-59 per cent of residents who have received a booster have now received a fourth dose.
That trails well behind Belconnen (80-89 per cent), and Woden Valley and South Canberra (70-79 per cent).
But a closer look reveals the impact outbreaks have had on individual centres, and how it skews the regional data.
In three of North Canberra's four centres, between 90 and 100 per cent of boostered residents have now received a fourth dose, though the region's average sits at 60-69 per cent.
At the other, the Canberra Aged Care Facility in Lyneham, the figure is currently mired at just 10-19 per cent.
But with the centre's booster rate at 90-100 per cent, fourth doses will almost certainly surge in the coming weeks.
At the Goodwin Centre on Monash - one of Tuggeranong's three aged care homes - fourth dose rates are at 80-89 per cent.
But it's a starker picture at the region's other two centres, Uniting Amala in Gordon (50-59 per cent) and Warrigal Care in Calwell (20-29 per cent).
The new data will be released weekly, to complement snapshots of the COVID-19 situation in Australian aged care homes published each Friday.
That data showed 14 of Canberra's 26 aged care centres were grappling outbreaks, with 71 residents and 43 staff infected by the virus as of Friday.
Outbreaks were underway in more than a thousand aged care homes, where more than 15,000 staff and residents had contacted the virus.