All we now need is you … it is up to all of us: PM

Scott Morrison has issued a rallying cry for Australians to get jabbed and end Covid-19 lockdowns, as health officials monitor the efficacy of Beijing’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Scott Morrison has issued a rallying cry for Australians to get jabbed and end Covid-19 lockdowns, as health officials monitor the efficacy of Beijing’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines and their potential impact on reopening travel for Chinese tourists and ­students.

The Prime Minister said Australians would not let “negativity overwhelm our optimism” and warned that ideas of letting the virus rip were “fanciful, foolish and dangerous”.

Writing in The Australian after releasing the national cabinet’s four phase reopening plan on Friday, Mr Morrison used Australia’s successful Olympics campaign as an inspiration for the country to achieve 70 per cent vaccination coverage by December.

“As Prime Minister, I take responsibility for the early setbacks in our vaccination program. I also take responsibility for getting them fixed and that we are now matching world’s best rates, with more than one million doses every week,” he wrote.

With the number of fully vaccinated Australians moving above 19 per cent on Saturday, the same day southeast Queensland joined Greater Sydney in lockdown, Mr Morrison said targeted lockdowns were the “only way to stay ahead of the new Delta strain”.

“I wish this was different but the Delta strain is far more infectious. The science of the Delta strain is the game-changer and you can’t ignore it. The tools of testing and contact tracing are no longer enough to enable us to weather limited cases in the community,” he said.

“We now need 70 per cent of our population aged over 16 to get vaccinated to move to the next phase where we can start saying goodbye to lockdowns.

“When we hit 80 per cent, lockdowns should become a thing of the past.”

Under the fourth phase of the national reopening plan, where Australians live with the virus as they do with influenza, inter­national borders would reopen, with only high-risk travellers required to quarantine.

Speaking after the national cabinet met on Friday, Mr Morrison said he expected vaccines such as the Novavax jab would “at some point be recognised” in Australia and that digital vaccination certificates would be in place when borders reopened.

With more than 1.5 billion Sinovac and Sinopharm doses administered in China and hundreds of millions more distributed across the globe, including to South Pacific nations, the commonwealth will need to decide whether vaccinated people from one of Australia’s top tourist, international student and business markets can travel to the country.

While it was likely other vaccines being used in the US and elsewhere would be approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration over the next year – in addition to Pfizer and AstraZeneca – further work would be required on the Sinovac, Sinopharm and Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccines.

As Beijing uses its mass supply of doses to promote its vaccine diplomacy push, federal authorities are expected to monitor the effectiveness of the Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs in other countries and take advice from international health bodies, including the World Health Organisation.

The WHO endorsed the “emergency use” of Sinopharm and Sinovac in May and June but questions have been raised over the efficacy of the drugs, which have been distributed to countries across the globe including Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Chile, Brazil, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

The Australian understands the Morrison government, to get more jabs in arms, will significantly expand its $41m vaccine advertising blitz, headlined by a celebrity-driven campaign in September coinciding with surges in vaccine supply.

The Department of Health spent $11.5m on its vaccine campaign media buy in June and the federal government is considering research outlining what incentives could be offered to encourage vaccination.

Mr Morrison said he was confident Australians would not let the pandemic “beat us”.

“We won’t let our frustration get the better of us. We won’t let negativity overwhelm our optimism. We will just put our head down and keep pressing on.”

“Despite the current setbacks from recent lockdowns, more than one million Australians were able to get themselves back into work after last year’s Covid-19 recession, as our unemployment rate fell to 4.9 per cent.

“Now we have to finish the job and get Australians vaccinated. Because that is our path back.”

Mr Morrison said like all Australians, he wished the vaccination targets developed by the Doherty Institute were “lower” but “it’s not. It’s what the detailed scientific analysis of the virus tells us.

“The science of Covid-19 writes these rules, not us, so we just have to adjust and beat it.

“If the virus changes again, we’ll have to do the same.

“If we all work together, we can get this done, including getting to the next step before the end of the year. But it is up to all of us. There will be enough supplies. There will be enough GPs, pharmacists and nurses to deliver the jabs. All we now need is you.”

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce on Sunday predicted private companies would begin refusing service to unvaccinated people. He said business owners would likely not want to be responsible for unvaccinated people falling sick from the virus.

“People in private enterprise are going to say ‘Look, I’ve got rights here too’,” Mr Joyce told Sky News.

“If you want to come into my barber shop or my childcare facility … then I have a right to say, maybe, have you been inoculated’? And if you say you haven’t, I have got a right as the owner of the shop to say I can’t have you sitting in a seat next to someone who has.”

Lieutenant General John Frewen, who is leading the ­national vaccination rollout, said he planned to step-up the program to two million doses a week.