After months of hard work by health workers and community leaders, all 17 communities are celebrating the important milestone, and are now working towards bringing up their second dose rates.

Big Rivers now has some of the highest vaccination rates in the NT, with Barunga, Bulman and Jilkminggan all recording first vaccination rates above 95 per cent.

A number of communities have seen significant jumps in vaccination rates in just a few weeks, with many communities recording first dose rates as low at 30 per cent in early November.

One of these communities is Lajamanu, which recently went into lockdown when COVID-19 was detected in the community's wastewater and a man in his 40s tested positive to the virus.

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Lajamanu's first dose vaccination rate for those over 16 has surged to 78.4 per cent in just a couple of weeks, with the second dose rate at 43.8 per cent, according to Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation Katherine West Health Board.

Katherine West services eight remote communities across the Big Rivers region, with chief executive Sinon Cooney saying he is "incredibly proud" of the work that has gone into the remote vaccine rollout.

"I'm super proud of our team more broadly in the way they responded to this...supporting people to be vaccinated in the community and [I'm] also really proud of the community that they've really embraced the vaccination effort because it's got to be everyone together," Mr Cooney said.

"Our staff work as hard as they can, but if the community doesn't embrace the effort, we are fighting an uphill battle. But, we've had a really good turnaround from the communities across the region."

"A lot of vaccinations were done in the last couple of weeks. So ...we're really ramping up our efforts in the next week or a week or two to catch up the second dose rate with the first dose rate."

Other communities services by Katherine West include Kalkarindji, with a first dose rate of 78.6 per cent, Timber Creek which is at 81.1 per cent and Yarralin at 77 per cent.

Mr Cooney said health care workers had to overcome a significant amount of vaccine hesitancy and misinformation in remote communities to get to the rates they are at today.

"I had some staff I don't know whether we'll ever get there and I said 'we'll get there, we've just got to keep going. Keep talking. As long as we're still talking - we stop talking, there's no hope," Mr Cooney said.

"It was a hard slog and it was a gradual effort but I'm so, so super proud."

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