The comments come amidst concerns surrounding the late arrival of the shots in some country hospitals, and the fact smaller towns on the mid-north coast will experience delays due to the floods.

Many country clinics, including those in Gunnedah, were expecting the vaccine to arrive on Friday last week but did not receive them until Monday.

Some even arrived on Sunday, but were met with locked doors and an empty surgery due to communication issues.

Mr Coulton described these as 'teething problems' and said ultimately a setback of a few days is not significant in the scheme of things, given the rollout was never going to be quick off the mark.

"In the first week of the 1B rollout there's 1000 GPs identified across the country, within three weeks it will be 4000 and as we go into the next phases pharmacies will come on board and more respiratory clinics," he said.

"So it was always meant to ramp up."

He acknowledged that supplies from overseas had not been as plentiful as the government had hoped, but is understanding of the fact vaccinations are more needed in Europe where people are still dying by the thousands.

READ ALSO:

The availability of the first lot of Australian-made shots should help though, stated the Member for Parkes, who is encouraging eligible members of the community to book in their appointment as soon as possible.

"People need to register, they need to book in so they actually know when they can go, and as we get more of the Australian-produced vaccine becoming available those numbers are going to increase quite rapidly," he said.

He revealed some positive feedback has already been provided to him by clinics in his electorate, who are experiencing a large number of people attempting to book their jab in very early.

While the process will be spread out and not everybody can be vaccinated within the first week or so, it has pleased Mr Coulton that there is such a willingness by the community to book in and rightfully put their faith in the science.

Despite being slightly behind schedule, he said there is enough evidence to suggest the government could achieve the targets set out in the current timeframe.

"At this stage I think it would be a little bit premature for me to say we're going to finish dead on time, but at this stage at we believe we're pretty well as close as we'd like to be," he stated.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: