Coronavirus: 6 million next in queue for vaccines

More than six million Australians are due to be vaccinated from next Monday under the latest phase of the national COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

More than six million Australians are expected to receive a COVID-19 vaccination in the next phase of the rollout. Picture: Penny Stephens

More than six million Australians are due to be vaccinated from next Monday under the latest phase of the national COVID-19 vaccine rollout, including two million young adults with underlying medical conditions.

Phase 1B, targeting 6.13 million Australians, is 10 times larger than the rollout so far, which has vaccinated 159,294 Australians, including those at high risk and frontline workers.

Despite missing the initial target of vaccinating four million people by early April, Scott Morrison said the government was on track to deliver the first of two shots to every willing Australian by October. The four-million vaccination target is now expected by April 26.

The Prime Minister, who ­received his second dose of the vaccine on Sunday, said the ­decision to produce vaccinations ­domestically had been a game-saver for Australia, with supply a “critical swing factor” in the delivery of the jab.

“If we had been right now solely reliant on the international ­importation of vaccines, then we would not have a vaccination ­program in this country this year,” he said.

Phase 1B includes an ambitious goal of vaccinating more than 300,000 people within the first week, with a target of more than million doses a week by mid-June, depending on supply.

Among those to be vaccinated under this phase are one million Australians over the age of 80, 1.85 million over the age of 70, two million younger Australians with underlying health conditions and disabilities, 953,000 frontline workers, 196,000 servicemen and women and 87,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The federal government has spent $6bn on the vaccination rollout, including $3bn securing access to 20 million Pfizer doses, 53.8 million doses of AstraZeneca, and 51 million Novavax doses.

A CSL centre in Melbourne is producing the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is expected to be ready in the coming weeks.

Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy said if every thing went to plan, every Australian would have received a jab by October

“It is dependent on the logistics working with the aged-care rollout (and) it’s dependent on that supply issues,” he said.

“If CSL have any issues with the rollout of the supply of vaccine, if there were any issues with a vaccine that might where the science or the evidence change, we might have to change our strategy.”

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese criticised the speed of the federal government’s rollout, saying Australia was falling ­behind the rest of the world.

“Scott Morrison said that they’d be four million Australians vaccinated by the end of this month,” he said. “Well, there’s two-and-a-bit weeks to go and we’re on about 150,000.

“We are way, way short.”

Nearly 40,000 residents in 437 aged care and disability care centres have received a jab, with a rollout targeting the primary care sector due to begin next Monday.

The chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, Catherine Bennett, said how a broader community rollout would work would likely be known from next month.

“The reality is we can only go as fast as our infrastructure allows us and this is a first, so it’s impossible to know in advance how quickly things will happen,” she said.

About 678,000 Australians are expected to have received two doses by June as the government begins Phase 2A, which looks to vaccinate all Australians aged over 50.