Why Melbourne's COVID outbreak might solve Australia's vaccination problem.

Here we go again. 

Our news feeds are full of breaking news banners and words like 'lockdown' and 'circuit breaker' and 'cluster' as the virus that has ruled our lives for the past year once again threatens one of our communities. 

On Thursday Victoria announced it will once again enter a stage three lockdown to try to smother a growing outbreak of COVID-19 in Melbourne's northern suburbs that's jumped to 26 infections in a matter of days. 

Watch: Victoria's most recent press conference. Post continues after video.

But this recent cluster has also led to a huge increase in the number of Victorians getting vaccinated.

The number of doses delivered by the state government rose from 8269 on Monday to 15,858 on Tuesday, with the federal government administering a similar number of doses via GP clinics and in the aged care and disability sectors on the same day.

It meant Tuesday was a record vaccination day right across the country, with 104,000 vaccines delivered.

While other countries have been busy vaccinating as many people as possible, Australians - safely tucked away in our island fortress - haven't been showing the same level of urgency to roll up our sleeves and get jabbed. We've also been hindered by the government's sluggish rollout.

But fear and complacency are the two words being used to describe Australians' hesitancy with or without accessibility, with a recent survey by the Sydney Morning Herald and Resolve Strategic, finding that one-third of Australians were unlikely to get vaccinated, which is a higher statistic than reported in previous months.

As Victoria's Acting Premier James Merlino told Thursday's press conference, "the vaccine rollout is not where we hoped it would be. It is not where it should be. If more people were vaccinated, we might be facing a very different set of circumstances than we are today. 

"But sadly, we are not. If we make the wrong choice now, if we wait too long, this thing will get away from us."

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley reiterated that getting vaccinated was one of the five permitted reasons to leave home amid the newly imposed lockdown and remains "our only ticket out of this."

Read: Everything you need to know about Victoria's snap 7-day lockdown.

So now that we've had our wake-up call, it's time for the federal government to do their bit.

As the BBC reports, Australia is one of the slowest in the developed world to immunise its population.

Dr McKay confirms access remains his biggest roadblock: "The bigger problem at this point in time is the access to vaccinations. So you can only get the AstraZeneca vaccine if you're at your GP. So younger people who are needing the Pfizer vaccine will need to go to a major hospital or a vaccine hub, and some of the supplies have been slow and delayed. Certainly in my clinic we've been delayed a number of times - we've had to cancel our entire list of people getting vaccinated that day, having to rejig them to another day when the truck has finally arrived." 

So for the average Australian, this is our hesitancy circuit breaker. For the Australian government, it's a hurry along. 

Widespread vaccination is still our number one tool against this virus.

Feature image: Getty.