Tory Shepherd: Aged-care residents are all meant to be vaccinated by now

Australia is supposed to be making millions of its own vaccine doses by now. If we fall further behind, we’ll face major problems, writes Tory Shepherd.

Vaccines. Where the bloody hell are you?

The Federal Government said four million doses of COVID-19 jabs would be delivered by the end of March.

Instead, only 600,000 had been rolled out.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said, way back in November, that Australians were “at the front of the queue” under the Government’s strategy.

But now we’re lagging at the back of the pack.

Any hope of having the whole country done by October is looking shakier by the day. The states are blaming the feds, and the feds are leaking against the states.

Aged-care residents are all meant to be vaccinated by now but many are still waiting, and providers are unsure about what is meant to happen next. GPs have said they’re in the dark about the plan.

Everything was going so well. And it still is going well, if you look at Australia’s teensy infection and death rates compared to the rest of the world, and at the economic recovery.

Imagine if we stuffed it up now.

Health Minister Greg Hunt poses for photos with Anne Hyslop as she receives her COVID vaccine. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Andrew Henshaw

If the plan founders (and it certainly seems to be flailing), there are two huge risks.

The first and most obvious one is that we keep having outbreaks, and risk an outbreak getting out of control if our contact-tracing systems fail.

There’ll still be lockdowns, and border closures. That’ll get less likely as more people are vaccinated and more lessons are learned about controlling the spread, but this bug isn’t dead by a long shot.

The second and more tricky risk is that, as fingers are pointing every which way and blame is apportioned over the rollout, vaccine hesitancy will increase.

The jabs, for now, are going to those most in need. To aged-care residents, to frontline workers. And they can’t go out fast enough.

But as eligibility expands to the less-urgent groups – younger, healthier cohorts – there’s a chance people will dally, or not take it up at all.

Amid social media misinformation, confusion over the timeline of the rollout, and worries about vaccine safety, there’s a large group of people who will not rush to get a needle.

The Australian reported this week that just four in 10 people aged under 34 would get a vaccination as soon as it was available. Just over six in 10 people in lower income brackets would jump for the jab, compared to eight in 10 in the higher brackets.

Overcoming that hesitancy, getting Australia to herd immunity and borders more reliably open, needs clear and concise information.

People need to trust that they’re being told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, trying to set the record straight yesterday, just put more bends in it.

He placed the blame for any glitches with the rollout squarely on Europe’s shoulders, after 3.1 million out of 3.8 million expected doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine did not leave Europe for Australia.

“This is about supply,” Mr Morrison said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with a palette of COVID vaccine at CSL Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Health Department head Professor Brendan Murphy also said the “only thing that is limiting the rollout is vaccine supply”.

But that’s not the whole truth when Australian company CSL is meant to be producing a million local doses a week, and isn’t.

When it’s not clear how many Pfizer shots we can expect.

Health Minister Greg Hunt released some more figures on Wednesday afternoon, but we still don’t have a clear timeline on when we can expect most Australians to be immunised.

Mr Morrison was asked about blame-shifting with the states, and about the bickering with Europe over supply issues.

That the vaccines hadn’t arrived was “just a simple fact”, he said, and repeated it for good effect.

“It’s not a dispute. It’s not a conflict. It’s not an argument. It’s not a clash. It’s just a simple fact,” he said, before blaming the media for kicking up dust around the issue.

It’s very simple messaging – blame Europe, and the “simple fact” of those 3.1 million missing doses.

But it’s not clear or honest communication about what’s really going on.

This is why Mr Morrison keeps getting slapped with the moniker “Scotty from Marketing”, a reference to his time at Tourism Australia when they developed that ad with Lara Bingle asking “Where the bloody hell are you?”

It was a simple message, an attractive message, but the campaign flopped, and was dropped.

We can’t afford the vaccine rollout to be another failed campaign.