All Australians aged over 50 to be given Covid vaccine from June in new rollout plan

Detailed new plans for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout have been revealed. Here’s when you might receive your first jab.

All Australians aged over 50 will be able to receive a COVID-19 vaccination from June, according to detailed new plans for the rollout released by the federal government.

By that time, the 678,000 Australians in phase 1a of the rollout — including aged care residents and frontline workers — should have received the two jabs required to keep them safe.

From next Monday, the phase 1b rollout will begin for 6.1 million Australians including anyone aged over 70 and 2 million younger adults with underlying medical conditions.

More than 300,000 doses will be given to that group next week, increasing to 400,000 doses the week after that and then about 500,000 doses a week for the two months from April 12.

While the government will miss its initial target of vaccinating 4 million people by early April, Scott Morrison — who received his second dose on Sunday — said it had been a “careful start” impacted by supply chain disruptions overseas.

As of last Friday, 159,294 Australians had been vaccinated, including 38,924 people in aged and disability care across 429 facilities.

Prime Minster Scott Morrison is seen receiving his second and final COVID-19 vaccination . Picture: Bianca De Marchi

Prime Minster Scott Morrison and aged care resident Jane Malysiak gesture after receiving their second and final COVID-19 vaccination shot. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

n SA, 246 vaccinations were given yesterday, taking the total so far to 7124 – well short of the state’s 12,000 target set for today. The Victorian Government had delivered 30,298 doses to frontline health and quarantine workers, compared to 36,820 in NSW and 18,411 in Queensland.

The CSL factory in Melbourne will start pumping out one million doses a week from later this month, which the Prime Minister said was “a game-saver for Australia”, adding that the country would not have had a vaccination program this year without the domestic production.

It is now expected that 4 million people will have received a jab by the week of April 26.

The government’s plan will see about 1000 GP clinics receive 100 doses a week from next Monday, with another 300 GP clinics receiving 400 doses a week and 130 GP-led respiratory clinics receiving 700 doses a week.

From March 29, that will be supplemented by more GP clinics receiving 50 doses each per week.

There will be more than 1000 sites delivering jabs next week, a number which is expected to reach 5000 by April 12 as up to 3400 smaller GP clinics come online to each provide 50 doses per week.

All Australians aged over 50 will be able to receive a COVID-19 vaccination from June

By June, Australians will be able to access the jab from more than 7000 sites, as extra GP clinics and pharmacies are involved to help expand the rollout to the wider adult population.

Phase 2a, covering all adults aged over 50 and more frontline workers, is scheduled to begin then, as the rollout expands to deliver more than one million doses per week.

The government expects to have secured 50 million doses by October.

Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy said by this time, all Australians who wanted the vaccine would have received at least one dose.

But he said authorities hoped to bring this forward to September as they worked with CSL to see if more AstraZeneca doses could be produced.

The detailed rollout information released on Sunday also revealed the government expects millions of doses of the Novavax vaccine to be available from October, meaning Australia would have supplies totalling almost 80 million shots by the end of the year.

Originally published as All Australians aged over 50 to be given Covid vaccine from June in new rollout plan