The federal government has offered Maitland's mass vaccination hub a higher number of Astrazeneca vaccines.

The offer came on Friday morning, around the same time NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the delta strain outbreak in Sydney was now a national emergency and she wanted the federal government to redirect all vaccination initiatives to South Western and Western Sydney.

Dr Craig Richards suspects this latest development will delay the roll out of Pfizer in Maitland but he is hopeful the roll out of Astrazeneca won't be impacted.

At this stage the Lorn Surgery clinic has 800 doses of Astrazeneca in the fridge and intends to run another clinic at Maitland Showground in two weeks.

Dr Richards supported the idea of focusing on vaccinating people in Local Government Areas that were already enduring an outbreak.

"The best protection from COVID is to not be exposed in the first place. Being vaccinated is a second line of protection," he said.

"Essential workers and workers who are leaving these hotspots should be all fully vaccinated ... Removalists in Sydney should be getting vaccinated immediately before worrying about the regions.

"The issue remains that young people who are at increased risk of COVID who can't access Pfizer."

Dr Richards said he would be ready to expand the cilnic when demand and vaccine supply allowed.

"We will be ready to reactivate, we don't book people in for a vaccine until we have the vaccine in the fridge and we've got 800 doses at the moment so we've got enough for a couple of weeks yet," he said.

EARLIER:

THE number of people who showed up for the first mass vaccination clinic at Maitland Showground on Thursday has highlighted the "unmet need" for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in the region.

Dr Craig Richards, of The Lorn Surgery, said they vaccinated about 300 people at the clinic, including walk-ins.

"We had 60 booked for the first hour, but we did 100 vaccines in that time," he said. "Clearly there is some unmet demand there - a lot of those people spoke about how they had really struggled to get a vaccine any earlier."

IN THE NEWS:

Dr Richards said there was also quite a lot of interest from younger people who were not yet eligible for Pfizer.

"If we have enough people on our wait list we will probably run another clinic within two weeks, and we are hoping that within a month we'll have some Pfizer, which will certainly result in much more regular, larger clinics," he said. "If we can get a large quantity we will run a clinic every week - and if we get as much as we'd like, we'll run it every day. There is a demand and a need for a local mass vaccination clinic."

Book via lornsurgery.com.au or 4933 2622.

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