“We want everybody vaccinated…we don’t have the supplies,” says Premier Dan Andrews

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said a “ring of steel” should be put around Sydney after New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared a national emergency at a crisis cabinet meeting as NSW cases climbed to 136. She said, it is “fairly apparent” the state will not be close to zero by next Friday.

The Victorian Premier told journalists on Friday that NSW have “got a very significant challenge”.

“Many cases, and many of those cases were out and about for the entirety of their infectious,” Premier Andrews said.

Mr Andrews warned that if a “ring of steel was not put around Sydney, we will finish with the whole country in lock down”, and said he would be calling for this  “at the national cabinet meeting” after his press conference.

“I’ll be making the point very clearly tonight [at national cabinet] we need to contain this so that we don’t have a national emergency in every part of our nation.

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“If Sydney has been declared a national emergency, then my message is very clear, it is a national responsibility to do everything possible to contain the spread,” the Premier said.

He added that Victorians “stand ready to provide practical support” to NSW, and the “learnings” and the experience that “we tragically have as Victorians given what we went through last year alone.”

Asked by Neos Kosmos if the Premier had any feedback from multicultural community leaders and what more the government could do to end vaccine hesitancy, Premier Andrews said “every member of the government, through to the Minister of Health, to myself, is engaged with multicultural communities,”

“All of us and indeed our public health officials see multicultural engagement as important, getting information in various languages is important,” he said.

The Premier said that the government is “recruiting trusted voices in many different communities to spread the word, and that has been a feature of our success.”

“It will be a feature of our successes that we convince [multicultural] people to get vaccinated for them, for their family, for every family.”

On the issue of vaccine hesitancy among migrant communities, the Victorian Premier acknowledged that “there is some hesitancy in some quarters.”

“I don’t think there is quite the hesitancy that we sometimes read about, my sense of it is that there are millions and millions of Australians, or diverse backgrounds, who want to get vaccinated, and they can’t wait for the supplies to arrive, so that they can get jab, and a second jab, to play their part,” added Premier Andrews.

Neos Kosmos also asked given the Delta variant is infecting children, and given jurisdictions across Europe are vaccinating teachers, if he will lobby national cabinet for teachers, and students, to get the jab.

“We don’t know how much vaccines we’ve got, whether there’s going to be a million doses come forward next month, it’s very challenging and there are lots of worthy clients.

“Given that the kids are a significant feature of Delta outbreaks, the notion that schools would be open because teachers have been vaccinated is not a consideration, having open schools contributed to that delta outbreak in the first place,” Premier Andrews said.

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He also referred to the ATAGI advice to vaccinate younger Australians, under 18 years of age.

“What we want to do is simple, we want to get everybody vaccinated as fast as we can, and the challenge is we don’t have the supplies we need right now, but that’s coming.”

Premier Andrews called the planned anti-lockdown and ant-vaccine protest planned for the weekend “ridiculous.”

“If you want to protest to get something protest against this virus by staying at home following the rules so we can get out of lock down.”