Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout revealed: When will you get your dose?

Australia’s full coronavirus vaccine rollout plan has been revealed. Find out when you’ll get the jab.

Health workers have been told to be ready to start giving patients the COVID-19 vaccine in just six days as the first doses of the Pfizer jab arrived in Australia on Monday.

From Monday, Australia will embark on its biggest logistics exercise in peacetime with the rollout of the vaccination program over 251 days, eventually administering up to 150,000 jabs a day.

The first shipment of 142,000 Pfizer vaccines — Australia’s ticket to travelling overseas again — touched down in Sydney shortly after midday yesterday, ready for the first phase of the rollout to start on February 22.

The Pfizer vaccine arrives in Australia on Monday. Picture: AAP/ Bianca De Marchi

From Tuesday consent forms will be available online for the guardians of aged-care residents to sign up their loved ones to receive the jab in the coming weeks, while states are preparing to administer the vaccines to quarantine workers.

The federal government has committed to vaccinating more than 20 million people by the end of October, starting with 80,000 Pfizer doses before increasing to more than a million jabs a week also using the AstraZeneca candidate.

In a vote of confidence for both jabs, Australia’s chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly said he would happily take either.

“It would be to demonstrate my faith in both of them and they’re equal,” he said.

From the first Pfizer shipment, about 62,000 jabs are being kept aside as insurance to guarantee recipients receive their second dose at the correct time even if there are supply chain issues.

Of the remainder, 50,000 will be shared between the states on a percentage of population basis, and 30,000 will be distributed to aged-care facilities by the federal government.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian has confirmed she wants a mix of high-risk workers to get the first round of doses allocated to NSW.

“I’ve asked to make sure it’s a cross section of health workers but also police and baggage handlers and a whole range of people who are directly exposed but then may unintentionally expose it to others,” she said.

“At this stage we don’t have any community transmission, but we do have people working with COVID patients in the quarantine system.”

The Pfizer shipment was brought by plane from the Belgian capital Brussels to Singapore and then Sydney Airport, where it was unloaded and transported to a secret DHL warehouse in Western Sydney.

The Pfizer vaccine arrives in Australia on Monday. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Over the next few days the vials will be stored in special -70C freezers as health authorities carry out damage assessments and batch testing.

The vaccines will be packed into boxes insulated with dry ice and distributed to 200 cold storage facilities around the country before the rollout starts on Monday.

Health Minister Greg Hunt announced the historic moment by declaring “the eagle has landed” — and confirmed in addition to the Pfizer doses arriving the government was expecting the Therapeutic Goods Administration to make a decision on the AstraZeneca jab “in the near future”.

“That should see a doubling of the number of doses per week by early March, if not earlier,” he said.

Australia’s leaders will roll up their sleeves for a “mix” of the available COVID-19 vaccines in Australia to show their faith in the jabs.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be given the Pfizer vaccine in the first batch of doses, while Mr Hunt and Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy will be given the AstraZeneca vaccine, subject to its approval.

Mr Morrison described the vaccination program as “one of the largest logistics exercises ever undertaken in this country”.

“This program has been developed by medical experts and it has been approved by medical experts so Australians can have confidence in the … strategy,” he said.

Aged-care residents are a priority in Phase 1A of the vaccine rollout, and a special workforce has been trained to direct nursing homes to provide the jabs.

A medic prepares a dose of the COVID-19 Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Picture: Anwar Amro/AFP

Elderly people and aged care workers in the first week of the rollout will be individually contacted by health officials, and a consent form has been made available online for families to prepare.

A spokesman for Mr Hunt said the vaccine rollout to aged care would cover every state and territory, as well as some remote centres “from the start”.

“We have seen the tragic consequences that COVID-19 can inflict on senior Australians, and that is why this vaccination program in aged care is so important,” he said.

“It will save lives.”

If the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved by the TGA, it would immediately trigger confirmation of the first shipment of doses Australia has ordered from overseas, effectively doubling the number of available jabs from the first week of March.

In total Australia is expecting 1.2m AstraZeneca international vaccine doses to bolster the Phase 1A rollout after it starts with Pfizer, with the aim to vaccinate all 680,000 Australians in the category within six weeks.

From at least April, Australia will have one million doses of AstraZeneca from its domestically produced supply each week. The government is also expecting at least one million doses of Pfizer from overseas per month for April, May and June.