Coronavirus: Scott Morrison wants Australians home first; UQ receives praise despite vaccine setback

Scott Morrison says Australians returning home must take priority over international students, while UQ has received praise despite abandoning its vaccine.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says getting Australians who are overseas back home must take priority over international student arrivals.
Following a National Cabinet meeting this morning, Mr Morrison was quizzed over whether special quarantine arrangements would be made for international student arrivals given they are important to the economy.

He said while international students were “important”, they could not come at the cost “of Australian citizens, who have every right to return to their home country”.

Mr Morrison said he was open to the idea of international students taking up additional capacity in hotel quarantine programs if it could be established.

“But that must satisfy the public health requirements of the states and Territories who have jurisdiction over those things and it can’t take away from an Australian’s ability to come home and that is our requirement,” he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison held a National Cabinet meeting this morning. Picture: Adam Taylor

Mr Morrison said more than 45,900 Australians had returned home since September 18, and about 38,000 were presently registered overseas.

“We will continue to monitor through contact directly with people overseas about the need to return home,” he said.

Mr Morrison said Australia would not rush to give a COVID-19 vaccine emergency approval, like has been done in the UK and US, because the nation had the virus under control.

“Overseas vaccination is the only thing they got, frankly, now to address what is a level of communication of the virus that is happening in the community in those places,” he said.

“Because of the hard work done by Australians here and the arrangements that have been put in place by all those you see in front of me and our governments, Australia is not in that situation.

“That means we can make this decision in the same way we always would dust us carefully, based on the best science, so when I’d tell you that it’s safe to happen I can do that with the greatest possible confidence that I can and that is what I owe to every Australian and particularly every parent.”

‘THEY’VE GIVEN UP THEIR LIVES FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS’

The University of Queensland team should not be criticised for including a de-activated part of the HIV virus in its COVID-19 vaccine, Australian Medical Association vice president Dr Chris Moy said.

And the ending of the UQ trial should instil confidence in the vaccine development process, he said.

“They had guts because they were trying to do something different,” he told News Corp.

“Remember at the start of this, we didn’t think we could create a vaccine against the coronavirus,” he said.

“They were trying something a little bit outside the square which we needed,” he said.

“I don’t criticise them at all I think you’ve got to say they had the guts to do that, they put their bodies on the lines for this, and I’d be angry to feel that people would be upset about it,” he said.

“They’ve, given up their lives for the last six months in a hell of a lot of money to try and get it this far,” he said.

And, he said the vaccine they produced appeared to actually work and it did not infect people with HIV.

The problem was it would make it difficult to test whether people who had the vaccine were clear of HIV if the caught the actual HIV virus in the future.

“It will make that test unreliable and for that reason the decision has been made to stop it,” he said.

The end of the UQ trial should inspire confidence in the vaccine development process, he said.

“This should in fact number one, improve confidence in the vaccine research and regulatory mechanisms that we go through the proper processes and testing and, if there’s a problem, despite the amount of energy that’s gone into it, that if the problem comes up, we stop the trial,” he said.

AUSTRALIA’S VACCINE PORTFOLIO ‘NEEDS TO BE DIVERSIFIED’

It comes as a leading infectious disease expert has warned that Australia must move immediately to diversify its COVID-19 vaccine procurement plan after the University of Queensland vaccine fell over.

University of NSW infectious diseases expert Professor Raina MacIntyre said it was not enough to buy 20 million extra doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine because it was not as effective as others on the market.

“There’s nothing wrong with buying another 20 million doses, I don’t know how unlimited or limited the budget is,” she said.

“I’m not saying not to do that I’m saying the portfolio needs to be substantially diversified, we need to be talking to all the companies that have front runner products and trying to secure the best deal we can for Australians,” she said.

University of NSW infectious diseases expert Professor Raina MacIntyre says Australia needs to diversity its COVID-19 vaccine procurement plan. Picture: UNSW

Trial results published this week show the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine being produced in Melbourne by Australia’s CSL is only 62 per cent effective.

This compares to the 95 per cent effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Australia has a deal to secure only 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, enough to vaccinate five million Australians.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced this morning the government has now secured 53 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, up from 33 million, to make up for the shortfall caused by the abandonment of the UQ vaccine.

The government will also buy an additional 11 million doses of the Novavax vaccine on top of the 40 million doses already on order. This vaccine is still in clinical trials.

However, Professor MacIntyre said while a smaller clinical trial showed the AstraZeneca vaccine could be 90 per cent effective if the first of two shots was delivered as a half dose this had yet to been thoroughly investigated in a widespread trial.

“That’s very technically problematic, you know, it’s never been done before we were GPs would have the same vaccine in different doses in the fridge,” she said.

“I think there’s a lot of question marks around the vaccine. And we should be diversifying our plan further and maintaining that agility and flexibility, pivot,” she said.

Australians should not be alarmed by the abandonment of the UQ vaccine.

“It’s normal for vaccine candidates to only get part way through the development process, and it’s the right thing to do if you come across a problem with a product that’s been developed the right thing to do is to stop the development at that point, rather than continue to invest in it and waste money really,” she said.

‘DISAPPOINTING DAY’: UQ VACCINE ‘WON’T GO AHEAD AS PLANNED’

CSL shares dived 2.7 per cent on Friday morning following the University of Queensland’s announcement that it would abandon its COVID-19 vaccine efforts.

A researcher from the University of Queensland has described abandoning their COVID-19 vaccine efforts as “a particularly disappointing day for the team.”

Speaking during a press conference on Friday, Professor Trent Munro said, “The fact is this data looked so promising. I think the collaboration with CSL has been fantastic, the commitment of the teams there has just been outstanding and it’s been seamless.”

Mr Munro said that while the trial is not stopping, “the future development … will now not go ahead as planned.”

He added, “I want to reiterate this was not a safety issue, the underlying issue was of a diagnostic interference”.

CSL agreed, saying there was no possibility the UQ COVID-19 vaccine would actually cause HIV, despite testing showing it produced false positive results.

Earlier, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UQ vaccine “will no longer feature as part of Australia’s vaccine plan” as he thanked the scientists for their involvement.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UQ vaccine “will no longer feature as part of Australia’s vaccine plan”. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Australia would increase its purchase of AstraZeneca’s vaccine by 20 million doses and buy an extra 11 million doses of the Novavax vaccine to ensure we had enough to vaccinate the entire population, he said.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said the vaccine rollout in 2021 was important to saving lives and despite the setback there was now the potential for slightly earlier completion of rollout in 2021.

“We’d planned in all of our contracts to expansion or ending the contract,” he said.

The UQ vaccine had proven safe and effective but the issue that led to the decision not to move to stage 3 trials was the risk of false positive HIV results.

“They are false,” he said.

The government had decided to abandon purchasing the UQ vaccine not because it didn’t work but because the HIV false positive results placed public confidence of the vaccine at risk, he said.

Health Department Chief Professor Brendan Murphy moved to allay public concerns about the state of the vaccine program reassuring the public Australia would still have access to three other vaccines.

Australia was in a good position because of the way we had controlled the virus, he said.

The team developing the vaccine was surprised at the high incidence of false positive HIV results that emerged in the trial, Professor Murphy said.

“It was a very low theoretical risk … but it was very surprising to see the incidence of false positive results,” he said.

Mr Morrison said the problem demonstrated the effectiveness of our strategy.

Australia had enough vaccines on order to treat the entire population twice over, he said.

“The net out-take of this is we are more likely to have the entire population vaccinated earlier,” Mr Morrison said.

This was because the UQ vaccine would have been more complicated to manufacture than the AstraZeneca vaccine which is already being produced by CSL.

There was greater confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine because its trials were much further progressed, Professor Murphy said.

“We are very confident we won’t see this issue with other vaccines,” Professor Murphy said.

Queensland premier Anastasia Palaszczuk said the UQ team has been “working night and day, they made the ultimate sacrifice” to get their vaccine up.

“But of course there are going to be some winners and losers when it comes to that,” she said of the vaccine race.

“I’m very proud of the work and the effort that they have put in to actually getting to this.”

Nancy Baxter from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health said if none of the other COVID-19 vaccines had worked people may have been prepared to accept the risk of a false positive HIV test in order to be protected from the virus.

However, there were a raft of other successful vaccines available that did not carry this risk, she told the ABC.

WHY THE UQ VACCINE WAS ABANDONED

The trial of Australia’s homegrown COVID-19 vaccine was abruptly halted after patients returned false positive test results for HIV.

A small component of the vaccine’s revolutionary molecular clamp platform is derived from the HIV virus that cannot infect people or replicate.

Although it poses no health risk testing in the COVID-19 vaccine trials showed it could lead to people returning false positive HIV test results.

The world is racing to make a COVID vaccine. Picture: Protein Lab

Australia’s vaccine maker CSL said in a statement this morning the vaccine trials had shown a robust response towards the virus and a strong safety profile. However, trials had also shown people given the vaccine developed antibodies which interfered with HIV tests.

“Participants were fully informed prior to their involvement that this could occur,“ the company said in a statement.

“Blood samples from study participants were tested after vaccination and it was found these molecular clamp and the antibodies did cause a false positive on a range of HIV assays (tests).“

“Follow-up test confirms there is no HIV virus present, just a false positive on certain HIV test. There is no possibility the vaccine causes infection.”

Aussie hopes for a vaccine have had a setback. Picture: Protein Lab

The company said following agreement with the Australian government would not progress the vaccine to phase three clinical trials.

However, the company said it would continue with early-stage clinical trials to determine how long the HIV antibodies persisted with studies so far showing the levels are already falling.

The company plans to submit full data for peer review in the future. The vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland Professor Deborah Terry said while the outcome was disappointing she was “immensely proud“ of the UQ team which had shouldered a heavy responsibility while the world watched on.

UQ vaccine lead Professor Paul Young said although it was possible to re-engineer the vaccine the team did not have the luxury of time needed.

“Doing so would setback development by another 12 or so months, and while this is a tough decision to take the urgent need for the vaccine has to be everyone’s priority,“ he said.

“I said at the start of vaccine development that there are no guarantees, but what is really encouraging is at the core technology approach we used has passed the major clinical test,“ he said.

“It’s a safe and well tolerated vaccine, producing the strong virus neutralising affect that we were hoping to see.

“So we will continue to push forward and we are confident that with further work the molecular clamp technology will be a robust platform for future vaccine development here in Australia and to meet bio security needs.”

Health Department Chief Professor Brendan Murphy said Australia was in a good position because of the way we had controlled the virus. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Chief Scientist and officer for CSL Dr Andrew Nash said the outcome highlighted the risk of failure associated with early vaccine development and rigorous assessment involved.

“This project has only been made possible by the innovative science developed by world-class scientist at the University of Queensland and the strong collaboration between our organisation and many others over the last 10 months,“ Dr Nash said.

CSL said it would continue manufacturing 30 million doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine with the first doses plan for release early next year.

In addition, CSL has agreed at the request of the Australian government to manufacture an additional 20 million doses of this vaccine now as the University of Queensland vaccine will no longer be available

Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said the problems that emerged with the UQ vaccine were “why we didn’t put all our eggs in one basket”.

“It was important we didn’t say you are the winner, that we spread our risk,” he said.

Despite the setback he said we should “not write them off yet”.

The UQ vaccine was the leading Australian vaccine candidate but a number of other Australian vaccine candidates are in earlier stage development including an mRNA vaccine being developed by Professor Colin Pouton at Monash University and another vaccine being developed by Nik Petrovsky at Flinders University.