Health secretary Brendan Murphy insists slow vaccine rollout did not cause lockdowns

Health Secretary Brendan Murphy insists that this often blamed thing isn’t responsible for the lockdowns across the country.

The head of Australia’s health department says the low supply of Covid-19 vaccines hasn’t caused the lockdowns that are now rampant across the country.

“I don’t think you can directly attribute the lockdowns to vaccination rate,” Department of Health secretary Dr Brendan Murphy told the parliamentary committee on Covid-19 on Friday.

But the chair of committee was quick to point out the nation’s premiers took the opposite view to Dr Murphy’s assertion.

“Every state and territory leader has said that the low vaccination rate is linked to the lockdown and that lockdown will continue while we have low levels of vaccination,” Labor senator Katy Gallagher said.

“(Are) you saying that’s not correct?” she asked.

Dr Murphy said countries such as the UK and Singapore had high vaccination rates but were still dealing with lockdowns and high transmission numbers.

“The Delta strain is growing in countries with much higher vaccination rates than ours,” he said.

Chief medical officer Paul Kelly echoed Dr Murphy, casting blame on NSW Health for the Sydney outbreak.

“There was never a suggestion from NSW Health that there was a vaccine supply issue. That was a failure of their (NSW’s) protocols,” Professor Kelly said.

“That limousine driver had plenty of access to the vaccine,” he said.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says low vaccinations rates in NSW mean cases will have to fall ‘close to zero’ before lockdown can be lifted. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

But senators pushed Professor Kelly and Dr Murphy on the contradictory claims coming from states.

“Premiers have repeatedly said it‘s because they do not have enough supply,” Labor senator Kristina Keneally said.

Dr Murphy conceded the vaccination rate was “an important factor” in preventing transmission and admitted the vaccine rollout was two months behind schedule.

However, he refused to admit this had caused the lockdowns in NSW, Victoria or South Australia.

“It may well be that many of those states would have locked down anyway,” Dr Murphy said.

The Prime Minister dismissed the idea earlier this month that a quicker vaccine rollout could have prevented Sydney's lockdown.

“The vaccination rate that you’re seeing right now and what might otherwise have been the case at this time would have still required a suppression strategy right now. To suggest otherwise is just completely and utterly false,” Mr Morrison said.

NSW, Victoria and South Australia are now all in lockdown.Picture: Ian Currie

However, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has made it clear that given the state’s low vaccination rate, community cases will have to fall “close to zero” before the lockdown can end.

“With the vaccination rates the way they are, we won’t be able to live freely and safely unless we are able to quash this current outbreak,” Ms Berejiklian said.

With a record number of 136 new cases announced on Friday, this target seems far off for many Sydneysiders.

But the bad news for NSW doesn’t end there.

At the committee on Friday, Lieutenant General Frewen also confirmed that no additional supplies of Pfizer were planned for NSW.

“At the moment, I don't have formal requests from NSW for additional Pfizer; I’ve only had informal requests,” he said.

“We’ve got AstraZeneca and we’re working hard to get as much AstraZeneca in NSW as possible.”