Why kids won’t be vaccinated in time for schools return

The childhood Covid vaccine drive has been thrown into chaos, meaning some parents won’t be able to get their kids jabbed when they want to. Here’s what’s happened.

Exclusive: Australia’s childhood Covid vaccination program is in tatters and doctors are warning it will be impossible to vaccinate every child aged 5-11 before school starts.

And doctors are pleading to be given larger supplies of the vaccine to speed up the roll out.

GP practices are allocated a maximum of 200 childhood vaccines a fortnight, but deliveries are frequently not arriving, forcing GP practices in all states to cancel vaccination clinics.

More than half of the 3000 parents surveyed by lobby group The Parenthood said the return to school should be delayed until more children were vaccinated and rapid antigen tests and air purifiers became available.

Meanwhile, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) revealed some GP practices had gone bankrupt during Covid and were about to close because Medicare funding for vaccinations did not cover the actual cost of delivering the service.

“Practice owners have actually subsidised the vaccine program because they’ve operated at a loss,” RACGP Victoria chairperson Dr Anita Munoz said.

With just one week to go before school returns, only one in four children aged five to 11 have had their first Pfizer dose and must wait eight weeks before receiving their second.

Less than half the 5-11 year olds vaccinated before school returns.

GP practices in every state have told News Corp of the “nightmarish” situation that has seen demand outstrip supply.

“If a general practice has 1500 children to vaccinate over an eight week period, delivery of 50 or 100 vaccines a week is really significantly under supply and will drag out the program by many months,” Dr Munoz said.

RACGP president Dr Karen Price said even though there would be more vaccines for kids than children eligible by the end of the month the problem was “getting it out and into the fridges”.

NSW GP Dr Charlotte Hespe said parents were frustrated and her reception staff abused when failed deliveries recently closed a childhood vaccine clinic.

“Our order was supposed to have arrived on Friday, we had a clinic fully booked on the Monday. We had to cancel the clinic. Then it finally arrived Tuesday afternoon and only half the order arrived,” she said.

“You waste a whole morning ringing up people telling them that you’re cancelling their appointment,” she said.

Dr Charlotte Hespe, of Sydney’s Glebe Family Medical Practice said her order of childrens’ Covid vaccines arrived four days late. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Queensland GP Dr Bruce Willett said he had a huge practice but was only able to order a tiny number of vaccines.

“We have 20 doctors so we have about 20,000 registered patients and so we get 200 a fortnight so that’s not enough at the moment,” he said.

Queensland schools go back on February 7 - the start date has been pushed back two weeks.

Dr Munoz’s practice, in Melbourne, ran out of Moderna supply for boosters at the beginning of last week, but she said it would take weeks to replenish because of the clunky ordering system.

Most clinics had not received government-pledged personal protective equipment (PPE), further driving up costs.

There are 2.3 million children aged 5-11.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said as of Friday more than 1.8 million doses of vaccine for 5-11 year old children had been delivered to vaccination sites. This would increase to 2.4 million by the end of January,” the department said. .

“This means there are more than 1.4 million vaccine doses available right now to be administered to children.”

Parents who could not get an appointment with their GP should make an appointment with their local community pharmacy or state or territory hub, the department said.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was vaccinating children aged 5-11 faster than any other country in the world.

Even though our 5-11 program only started less than a fortnight ago, we have now surpassed the percentage of 5-11s that have had a first dose in Israel, he said.

Australia was also likely to pass the US in the coming days, even though vaccinations started there in October.

Despite GP’s saying they were limited to ordering 200 doses of children’s vaccines per fortnight, the Prime Minister’s office said “the program allocates doses to as many GPs and pharmacists that want them to ensure there’s a fair spread of vaccines”.

“Rather than just sending all the doses to a few big clinics in the cities that would disadvantage regional Australians for example,” the spokesman said.

There would be enough vaccines in the country by the end of next week to vaccinate every child but it was up to parents to use them “we can’t force them to”, the spokesman said.

Originally published as Why kids won’t be vaccinated in time for schools return