‘Act on Covid-19 jab or we’ll lose economic war’

Business is demanding the Morrison government commit to a new timeline for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and reconsider taxpayer-funded industry support.

The Morrison government is under mounting pressure to commit to a new vaccine timetable so business can plan and prepare for a broader economic reopening. Picture: Gary Ramage

Business is demanding the Morrison government commit to a new timeline for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and reconsider taxpayer-funded industry support, warning Australia “risks losing the economic war” as other countries plan their reopening.

Peak bodies whose sectors have been decimated by the coronavirus said business confidence and the return of workers to CBDs could be derailed after a rare blood clot disorder linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine saw Scott Morrison abandon an October target for Australians to have their first jab.

There were nearly 1.2 million vaccines distributed nationwide as of Sunday as the government recalibrates its vaccine program.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian led concerns about Australia’s international standing, saying there would come a point when the rest of the world began re-­engaging with each other.

“We can’t afford to be left behind,” she said.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the absence of a vaccine timeline was more difficult to manage than a delayed one and made it very tough for businesses to plan.

“If we can’t expect specific dates, we should at least be aligning our restart plans to milestones in the vaccine rollout,” ACCI’s acting chief executive Jenny Lambert said.

Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said the government should use the timeline recali­bration to get states to approve nat­ionally consistent processes for the treatment of vaccinated Australians and overseas visitors.

“We may have won a health battle but we risk losing the economic war,” he said. “The UK expects to reopen in June and the US in October. We should expect the US and broader Europe to be fully re-engaged by the end of the year.

“This is where our relatively slow vaccine rollout may hurt us. Skilled workers, students and tourists will not wait and choose to go where borders are open and where they are welcomed.”

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly was unable to say how many Pfizer vaccine doses would be coming into the country by June but hoped it would be enough to inoculate the bulk of the nation’s healthcare workers.

The government continues to insist that Phase 1A and 1B for the country’s most vulnerable will be unaffected by new advice that Pfizer be given in preference to ­AstraZeneca for the under-50s.

There are 580,000 healthcare workers in Australia but Professor Kelly could not say how many of them were under 50 and fell into the priority phases of the vaccine rollout. “We will have, by the end of the year … 40 million doses of Pfizer,” he said. “Can I tell you on a week-by-week basis how much is coming in? Or how much will be here by the middle of the year? I can’t answer that question.

“With the vulnerable groups, including healthcare workers, we are continuing with our aim to have them all vaccinated by the middle of the year.”

He also estimated that aged-care residents would all have received at least one dose of vaccine “within the next few weeks”. About 142,000 aged-care residents have so far been vaccinated.

The government is closely monitoring the numbers of people now rejecting the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying on Monday that anecdotally, it was only “a very small number”.

Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive Margy Osmond said her sector had been forced to go without the “three things we need to survive”: certainty around state borders, a fast and efficient vaccine rollout and the reopening of the international border.

She said it was critical the government consider a return of JobKeeper.

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler said a successful vaccine rollout was the Prime Minister’s “most important job this year” and our economic recovery was inextricably linked to it.