Qudos Bank Arena repurposed as vaccination hub for Sydney HSC students

Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena has become a mass vaccination centre for HSC students living in the city’s southwest.

The Olympic Park stadium, which generally hosts sports and live music events, has been repurposed as a vaccination hub for year 12 students from eight local government areas (LGAs) of concern to receive their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine

The centre will have the capacity to administer approximately 4,000 vaccines per day, and is expected to vaccinate up to 24,000 students between August 9 – 14 as part of a gambit for NSW Year 12 students to return to face-to-face learning by next week.

More than 3,000 students from Liverpool, Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown, Cumberland, Parramatta, Blacktown, Georges River and Campbelltown attended the stadium to receive their first jab yesterday, with a further 8,000 having booked their spot for later in the week.

Qudos Bank Arena, which is owned by Australian events giants TEG, has not hosted any live music performances since Whitesnake, Tool, Alice Cooper and Michael Buble performed at the venue in February 2020.

TEG’s CEO Geoff Jones highlighted the importance of the mass-vaccination effort in a post to his LinkedIn, writing “we are proud to support NSW in its vaccination programme by opening Qudos Bank Arena as a vaccination hub”.

Representatives from TEG have been contacted to provide further comment on the vaccination hub.