Authorities ‘throwing everything’ at slow vaccine rollout

Australia’s leaders are taking a drastic step to get the COVID vaccine rollout “back on track”, amid the PM’s concession it needs an overhaul.

Australia’s leaders will meet twice a week until the vaccine rollout is “back on track”, as Scott Morrison concedes the program is too slow and in need of an overhaul at every level.

The Prime Minister says there are “serious challenges” he and state leaders needed to work together to address after he last week dumped all vaccine rollout targets.

The leaders will meet on Monday for the first of the emergency meetings that will continue for the “foreseeable future”.

“I have requested that national cabinet and our health ministers move back to an operational footing — to work together, closely, to tackle, head-on, the challenges we are all facing with making our ­vaccination program as good as it can be,” Mr Morrison said.

“We are throwing everything at these issues, uniting the nation to keep the vaccination program safe, to get the rollout right, and to be open and transparent about how we are tracking.”

Australia’s vaccine rollout was further thrown into disarray last week when new advice saw the only locally made vaccine – AstraZeneca – largely ruled out for under 50s due to concerns over a rare blood clotting condition that has so far suspected in two Australians.

Australia’s vaccine rollout was further thrown into disarray last week.

With the mRNA Pfizer vaccine now the only approved vaccine available for younger Australians, the federal government is looking into ­developing onshore manufacturing capacity of vaccines of its type.

Newly appointed Industry Minister Christian Porter confirmed the government was working to scale up current vaccine manufacturing facilities for mRNA jabs.

“An audit … identified companies based within Australia with mRNA production capability,” a spokesman said.

“The government is currently working with those organisations to explore whether that capability could be scaled up into the future.”

In February, federal Department of Health secretary Brendan Murphy said mRNA vaccine success has “surprised the world” and he saw a role for them moving forward.

“We don’t know how long the successful vaccines we are getting will last, or whether people will need more doses … and clearly CSL who are our sovereign manufacturing company are looking at that,” Prof Murphy said. “The government has commissioned some research to look at that, to look at what the potential is, so it’s an active consideration matter at the moment.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded the program is too slow and in need of an overhaul.

Health Minister Greg Hunt on Tuesday said he was in talks with the producers of the Pfizer vaccine and was trying to secure more than the roughly 130,000 doses delivered to Australia a week.

Australia has bought 40 million doses of the German jab but most of those are expected to arrive in the country between September and December.

Mr Morrison said he knews Australians wanted to be “further along in the recovery” from the pandemic and  teamwork would be ­needed to get through ­challenges posed by “patchy international vaccine supplies, changing medical advice and a global environment o need”.

“This is a complex task and there are problems with the program that we need to solve to ensure more Australians can be vaccinated safely and more quickly,” he said. “Working together we are all going to be in a ­better position to find the best solutions.”

Meanwhile, the state Health Department said coronavirus fragments were detected in 16 suburbs around the Ringwood area.