Turns Out That NSW Health “Error” That Saw Private School Boys Vaxxed May Not Have Been An Error
Emails obtained by The Australian show a NSW Health employee took "a personal approach" to get St Josephs students vaccinated.
Remember when NSW Health accidentally vaccinated a whole class of Joeys boys when it meant to only vaccinate the Indigenous kids? Well, it turns out it may not have been an accident, according to emails obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws.
In early July, the Sydney Local Health District said it vaccinated 163 Year 12 students from St Joseph’s College with Pfizer “in error”, ahead of other priority groups. They received Pfizer jabs that were at the time vary scarce in the country.
The St Joseph’s students were vaccinated in “error”, NSW Health says, after giving Pfizer to 163 students – despite it only being meant to be a smaller number of Indigenous students pic.twitter.com/kODUYhuyTM
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) July 6, 2021
But The Australian says emails it obtained show that a NSW Health employee wrote to the NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant to apologise about the whole thing blowing up in the media, and said they had taken a “personal approach” to getting all seniors vaxxed before the end of term.
At the time, NSW Health released a statement saying “It was agreed that the Aboriginal students would be vaccinated through the state health system at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital’s vaccination hub. Through an error, the wider group of boarders in Year 12…were vaccinated.”
The employee wrote to Chant to explain: “Knowing the Joeys situation well, I approached [Sydney Local Health District chief executive Teresa Anderson] in early May on my own initiative to ask whether it would be possible to vaccinate the senior students at St Joseph’s College.” The employee’s name was withheld.
“It was a personal approach and not on behalf of the school,” they wrote in the email.
The argument was that boarding schools were at high risk of transmission which was of concern considering the school’s apparently significant Indigenous population, along with its rural and remote students. Four Indigenous St Josephs students received the vaccine, which could mean the remaining 159 students were not actually eligible.
“In the context of the whole vaccination program, this was a small and highly targeted vaccination effort with an incredibly sound population health basis,” the employee wrote.
Chief executive Anderson had at the time referred to the whole-year vaccination as an error, while Chant and health minister Brad Hazzard each brushed it off as a mistake.
But in a reply email related to the apology, Anderson said, “I have just spoken to Kiel Harvey who was acting general manager at Concord and who was with (the clinician) when he rang me. Kiel’s recollection was the same as mine that it was just half a dozen Aboriginal students on scholarships from rural areas who were boarders,” says the Australian.
Whether it’s a genuine mistake or not, it once again raises the question about privilege in this country, and who has access to vital health care. Indigenous communities are still struggling to get vaccinated, and outbreak in west and far-west NSW is growing increasingly threatening.
Last week, 750 Aboriginal people had tested positive for COVID since mid-June, and the Wilcannia township had NSW’s highest rate of Covid per capita, according to The Guardian. When comparing the four local health districts of the mid north coast, western NSW, far-west NSW and northern NSW, the vaccination rates for non-Indigenous people was over twice the rate of that of Indigenous people. In some parts of NSW, less than 10 percent of First Nations people are currently vaccinated.