A new campaign worth $11 million will be launched on Thursday by the federal health department, aiming to convince people to get the Covid booster shot and the influenza vaccine.
This new campaign, titled “Take On Winter”, will let all Aussies know that it’s perfectly fine to do both shots at the same time, while it will be targeted mainly towards First Nations communities, kids under the age of 11 and the elderly.
There will be individual ad campaigns for each one of those groups which will all run across radio, TV and online platforms.
This campaign becomes increasingly necessary as the cases of people who have either the flu or Covid in Australia continues to rise, while the new sub-variants of the Omicron strain, BA-4 BA-5, are also climbing dangerously.
Also, the data from the health department shows that while 95 percent of Aussies over the age of 16 have been vaxxed twice and over 70 percent of them have even had their booster shot, that number drops down to 40 percent when we’re talking about kids between the ages of 5-11 who’ve had just two shots. Over half the people over the age of 65 have taken things a step further, getting a fourth shot against Covid, although there’s still room for doubt if there’s any point in doing so.
“Across the world, I think there is general acceptance there’s no evidence right now that the fourth dose is particularly called for, for younger people who don’t have compromised immunity,” said federal health minister Mark Butler.
He also pointed out that Australia is still “very much in the pandemic”.
“For the first time since 2019, we have the double threat of significant community transmission of both Covid-19 and influenza – with the likely outcome being a continued increase in case numbers over coming months,” a statement from Butler’s office said on Thursday.
“We’re still seeing enormous loss of life, enormous dislocation and massive pressure on our health and hospital systems,” he added.
According to data tracking website covidlive.com.au, last week alone Australia reported 196,000 cases across the nation, while 361 people lost their lives due to the virus.
If that’s not enough of an incentive to get vaxxed, we don’t know what is!
