Do we have a vaccine stockpile?

In the grips of a growing COVID-19 outbreak, the federal government has so far given NSW 350,000 extra doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines in a bid to get more people immunised.

Those doses have not come from other states and territories, and the boost to NSW’s vaccine arsenal has not come at the expense of other jurisdictions. So where did they come from?

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What’s the vaccination situation in Australia?

As of July 28, more than 8 million people have had a first dose of a vaccine and more than 3.5 million are fully immunised. That means about 30 per cent of the total Australian population has had at least one dose, and just over 13 per cent are fully vaccinated, 22 weeks into the national rollout.

Australia has relied to date on two vaccines: the AstraZeneca and Pfizer. The Commonwealth has ordered 52 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, most of which are being made locally, and 40 million of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. From September, the first of the 25 million Moderna doses on order will begin arriving. The Novavax vaccine is not expected until next year.

Several changes to advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine following a rare clotting disorder dramatically slowed the uptake of that immunisation, while supplies of the Pfizer vaccine have slowly ramped up. Tens of millions of doses of vaccines are going to be landing in Australia in the coming months.

So how are those doses arriving?

Pfizer doses are landing at Australian airports in numbers consistent with the federal government’s forecasts. Its document shows 900,000 to 1 million doses are expected each week, and can fluctuate slightly. Last week, 991,000 doses landed but this week it was just over 1 million.

Vaccines are divided among states and territories on a per capita basis, and doses are separately given to primary care facilities such as GPs and pharmacies. Rather than getting a set amount each week, every state has a minimum and maximum amount of each vaccine they can request of each available vaccine from the federal government depending on their needs at the time.

Sometimes Pfizer might deliver more than expected. And then, for example, Tasmania might not order its maximum allocation. This means there are can be tens of thousands of spare doses, which can be redirected to states that need them.

Is that how NSW received extra doses?

Yes, and they’re not going to get more doses than other states or territories overall – they’ll probably end up getting fewer doses in future deliveries to make up the difference.

That’s because even though they are on top of the state’s weekly allocation, they count as part of the state’s overall share of vaccines over time.

Are we getting more than the 40 million Pfizer doses we ordered?

In short, no. The new COVID Taskforce, headed by Lieutenant General John Frewen, didn’t order the vaccines and hasn’t increased our vaccine orders. But what it can do, he says, is talk to companies such as Pfizer about potentially bringing forward deliveries.

“Late on Friday [July 23], Pfizer advised it would be able to provide additional doses in August and we have provided additional doses this week using the additional allocations in August to backfill allocations to GPs,” he says.

“We are always happy to work with the states and territories around the agreed allocation and delivery processes.”

That means some weeks Australia may receive well more than 1 million doses expected, but those doses will be subtracted from future deliveries.

Don’t we have a national stockpile of COVID vaccines?

As of Monday July 26, there were about 3 million doses of vaccines in storage in Australia.

But there’s no special federal warehouse keeping spare vaccines at this stage. About half of the doses are sitting in GP clinics, vaccination hubs and pharmacies around the country waiting to be put into arms, and the rest are in the warehouses of DHL and Linfox ready to be transported to their final destinations.

About 95 per cent of those unused doses are AstraZeneca – CSL has continued to produce that vaccine at a rate of roughly a million a week from their Melbourne facilities. It’s gone unused because, until recently, young people were encouraged to wait for Pfizer instead.

The expert medical advice on that vaccine has recently changed for people in western Sydney, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said tens of thousands of young people are now choosing to get AstraZeneca.

“It has saved the lives of young people all around the world, particularly in the United Kingdom, so I would recommend they get that serious consideration,” he said on Wednesday.