Rita Panahi: Australia’s vaccine rollout is a national embarrassment

Perhaps the health bureaucracy who have all but run the country in the past 12 months should be asked why we now trail Rwanda in vaccine its rollout.

It’s the April fools’ joke that nobody is laughing at; Australia’s deplorable covid vaccination rate is making global news for all the wrong reasons.

The BBC’s headline said it all: “Australia falls 85% short of vaccine delivery goal”.

Missed it by that much.

Somehow, a first world nation with one of the best funded health systems is trailing a number of third world countries in vaccinating its population against coronavirus.

Instead of hitting or at least getting close to the target of four million vaccines administered by the end of March, only 670,000 doses have been dispensed.

That’s just over two vaccines administered per 100 of population.

Compare that to Israel where 115 vaccine doses have already been administered per 100 of population, of course you need to have two vaccines to complete your coronavirus immunisation.

Australia currently trails Rwanda, Bangladesh and Bolivia in its vaccine rollout.

Estonia, Morocco and Barbados have covid vaccination rates that are 1000 per cent higher than Australia’s rate. It’s a national embarrassment.

It’s not that our vaccine goals were too ambitious, four million was an eminently achievable target.

Elle Lockayne (22) is administered a COVID-19 vaccine by GP Sean Stevens

But the health bureaucracy who have all but run the country in the past 12 months have been far too relaxed about the glacial pace of the rollout and the fact that we began administering the vaccines later than much of the developed world.

Health department secretary Brendan Murphy said there was no urgency. “It’s not a race,” he said.

Tell that to the Queensland small business owners who will not survive the latest lockdown and the tsunami of cancelled bookings that followed.

Tell that to the workers in the aviation, higher education and tourism industries wondering when our international borders will re-open.

Tell the families who have survived on JobKeeper and are now wondering how they’ll pay the bills that “it’s not a race”.

Australia does not a COVID-19 problem but that’s only because we’ve been closed to the rest of the world for a year.

At some point we’ll have to re-open our borders and learn to live with small outbreaks but that won’t happen until we immunise the majority of the adult population.

Melbourne Airport's vaccination hub

The public health officials and politicians responsible for repeated lockdowns, restrictions and the slow vaccine rollout are on their full salaries, but many in the private sector are not.

Prof Murphy’s “it’s not a race” sentiment was dutifully repeated by the Prime Minister and several state leaders but now that states are finally realising that there is indeed great urgency particularly if they have no faith in their contact tracing and are willing to close their cities and borders over a handful of cases.

Finally, there is some real friction between the states and federal government with NSW and Queensland in particular speaking out about the shortcomings of the Morrison government’s vaccine program.

This is a good thing. For more than a year the national cabinet operated like a protection racket where the premiers and chief ministers and the prime minister were reluctant to criticise each other.

We saw little criticism from the prime minister on Victoria’s disastrous COVID response or WA’s border closures or SA’s pizza box buffoonery. And the premiers were reluctant to criticise the PM over the country’s late vaccine rollout.

Now, the gloves are off.

If that means the vaccine program is accelerated and we can fully re-open our economy and our country then let the fighting begin.