The department of health says it is working to address reporting inaccuracies with its COVID-19 vaccination data, impacting two Riverina local government areas (LGAs).
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Junee and Edward River have long had some of the state's lowest vaccination rates, with a fully-vaccinated population of 84.4 per cent and 69.4 per cent respectively.
However, the department of health has placed a disclaimer on each LGA stating there are "apparent data issues" resulting in coverage rates that "may not be representative and should be treated with caution".
The data issues are not new and have seemingly been in place since the vaccination rollout began; although the departments disclaimer only began appearing from early December last year.
A spokesperson for the department of health said the government uses Estimated Residential Population (ERP) data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as a population base when reporting coverage rates for the vaccine rollout.
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LGA-based data uses an ERP from 2019, the department said, meaning that some LGAs may have experienced changes in their population since then.
"This means that some LGA coverage rates may not be representative of the current circumstances," the spokesperson said.
"The Department of Health is currently undertaking work to transition to a more up to date ERP."
Junee mayor Neil Smith said he knew his region was "reported as being pretty low", but he doesn't "know why that would be the case" seeing as most people he speaks to in the community are "very much pro-vaccination".
The Murrumbidgee Local Health District's COVID coordinator Emma Field spoke about these data issues as early as November last year, citing other sources of data that put the regions vaccination rate much higher.
"We're working really hard with our state colleagues ... to look at how we can maybe get these vaccination rates amended," she said at the time.
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