Greg Hunt resists calls to open vaccine up to population

As Covid-19 outbreaks threaten to proliferate across the country the federal government resists calls to make the AstraZeneca vaccine available for under 60-year-olds.

Health Minister Greg Hunt. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Morrison government is resisting calls to make the AstraZeneca vaccine available for under 60-year-olds, despite public health experts reinforcing the low risk of the jab and outbreaks threatening to proliferate across the country.

Amid a deteriorating situation across the country, renewed focus has come onto the federal government’s sluggish vaccination rollout and the limited supplies of mRNA vaccines.

Despite the limited availability of Pfizer, Health Minister Greg Hunt said he would not overwrite the recommendation from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation but left the door open to the vaccine regulator making changes to its current risk/benefit analysis.

“Difficult decisions have been made and they have recommended, and we have adopted, and we will continue to do that,” Mr Hunt told a press conference on Sunday.

“If future circumstances mean that risk changes in one direction or another, then we will enforce and adopt the recommendations. At this stage, there is no change in the advice.”

With AstraZeneca being phased out as other vaccines become more available, the Department of Health said people under 60 could still receive the jab when the “benefits clearly outweigh the risk for that individual”.

University of Melbourne public health physician Nathan Grills said the risks of receiving the AstraZeneca jab were “very, very low”, and people had to recognise the risks in taking any medi­cation, such as the “much higher risk” of dying from taking aspirin.

“It’s all about balancing risk. It does make sense to allow people to choose to make an informed decision, weighing up the very, very low risks with potentially significant benefits,” Professor Grills said.

While Australia’s outbreak remained relatively under control compared to the rest of the world, Peter Collignon from the Australian National University said the focus should remain on the third of 70-year-olds who remained unvaccinated, but should be revisited if cases continued to spread.

“Eventually you do need to open it up, if people are willing to take the risk, and they’re informed, I think they should be able to do it,” Professor Collignon.

“The more community transmission you have, the lower you make the age cut off or recommendation – the cut off is actually 18 – the lower you make the recommendation for AstraZeneca.”

It came as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian claimed the state did not have enough supply to increase capacity to meet demand, amplifying concerns the problem-ridden vaccine rollout may mean people are exposed to the virus.

“The challenge is, we have literally millions of people in NSW wanting the vaccine,” she said. “The NSW government cannot control how many doses we get. I want to assure the community whenever we get doses we get them in arms.

“But we do not have more supply – we’re looking forward to that increasing in the coming weeks.”

While vaccinations in NSW have been about 18,000 a day, they are well below Victoria where vaccinations soared during the Melbourne outbreak to peak at 37,000, and consistently above 20,000.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese continued to press the Morrison government on the ongoing failure to ameliorate quarantine breaches and the rollout of the vaccine. He said there had been 26 outbreaks directly linked to the hotel quarantine system.

Despite the Therapeutic Goods Administration giving the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccination provisional approval on Friday, Mr Hunt said the ATAGI was not recommending additional purchases given ongoing safety concerns that were similar to the AstraZeneca jab.