COVID-19 vaccine rollout: Dr Rob Parsons happy with rollout but Gunnedah mayor fears potential outbreak danger

But Gunnedah mayor Jamie Chaffey said if there was an outbreak, the town would be unable to handle it and it would be a "catastrophic" situation.

It comes after Minister for Regional Health Mark Coulton visited the town on Wednesday afternoon to meet with local GP Dr Rob Parsons.

Dr Parsons said he felt it was "rolling really well at the moment" and Gunnedah was "doing really well" in administering the jab.

"This is a public health issue, it's a public health crisis, so everyone's just working overtime to get it done and protect the community," he said.

"We've been very lucky, we've got three practices that are immunising. We've got the Commonwealth-funded respiratory clinic that's open, Dr Gittoes in his surgery is also getting supplies of vaccines.

"I think all of us have ramped our systems up and now we're feeling fairly confident."

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He said the major drama would be when more vaccines were distributed, as many people were reacting from them.

"You're getting more than 50 per cent getting some form of reaction even though it was mild, and they were talking up to one-in-four people taking time off work," Dr Parsons said.

"I think when we do that en masse, we find that everything slows down and we couldn't afford to have one-in-four of our girls off [at the practice]."

But Cr Chaffey said an even bigger problem was the potential for an outbreak, especially with doctors already working overtime.

"When you look at the pressure that's on our community at the moment with poor access to doctors, so the doctors that are here are so overworked and under so much pressure, if we were to get an outbreak of COVID-19 it would've been catastrophic," he said.

"Even if we do, because we're certainly not out of the woods, we would not be in a position as a community that we would be able to handle it by ourselves, we would need significant support from state and commonwealth governments to deal with that."

The Gunnedah shire has only ever had one case, but this case was someone who lived in the shire but worked at Tamworth hospital and was able to "remain in their premise", according to Cr Chaffey.

Mr Coulton made it clear on his visit he still wanted people in the region to get the jab.

"Despite the fact that now AstraZeneca is now not being recommended for people under 50, there's still eight million Australians who are in that bracket that can get the AstraZeneca and so we are continuing on with that rollout," he said.

"The government at the moment is trying to acquire more of the Pfizer vaccine."

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