It wasn’t an elegant image, but it spoke volumes, megalitres in fact. “NSW is awash in AstraZeneca,” state Health Minister Brad Hazzard told the daily Covid-19 briefing on Thursday.
Citizens are shunning the locally made viral vector vaccine, he said, labelling its spurning a “shocker”. At the state-run hub at Sydney Olympic Park the other day, medics administered 9000 Pfizer jabs and a mere 50 doses of AstraZeneca.
The workhorse vaccine is a roughie with NSW punters, and the state has 826,000 doses of unused supply across the federal and state-run programs.
That’s more than 400 litres of an elixir that is saving lives and leading to the reopening of economies around the world.
NSW lags the national average on the share of the eligible population receiving a first dose or being fully vaccinated, but during the current lockdown has overtaken Victoria in total doses administered across all programs.
So far, 12.31 million doses of AstraZeneca have been supplied to the federal government for distribution. Just over 6.12 million doses (out of 10.65 million jabs administered as of Wednesday) are in arms, mostly through the commonwealth’s GP-led primary care program.
Almost 900,000 AstraZeneca doses have been provided to near neighbours such as East Timor and PNG under our aid programs. There are also 433,000 doses “in transit” with logistics providers.
In recent weeks, CSL’s production volumes have slumped because of scheduled plant maintenance and a shutdown. So average AstraZeneca supply over the past couple of months has been below a million doses a week.
But the ATAGI advice and attendant brand damage have caused a steady build-up of AstraZeneca supply in the fridges of GPs and at state clinics. Of three million vaccine doses available for use across Australia but not yet administered, the bulk of it is AstraZeneca, and most of that is in storage at the 5123 GP surgeries in the rollout.
Scott Morrison is urging people aged over 60 to get vaccinated, especially vulnerable populations in Sydney. “Please go and get your AstraZeneca vaccine as soon as you possibly can,” he said on Thursday.
The Prime Minister also revealed almost 40,000 people aged under 40 had opted for a first dose of AstraZeneca since June 28, the day he announced anyone under the age of 40 could approach their GP and request the vaccine. Mr Morrison also said community pharmacies would be brought into the rollout from next week to get more of this excess supply to where it is needed, such as southwest Sydney, where the Delta outbreak is concentrated.
Pharmacies would administer the Moderna vaccine, which has not been approved for use here, from September. The PM said these moves would add “horsepower” to the rollout.
According to its Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods entry, the fridge shelf life of AstraZeneca is six months, so there is no imminent danger of unused doses being discarded. In May, Canadian authorities extended by a month the shelf life of two AstraZeneca batches.
Across the vaccination program, of the 13 million doses designated as “available” – batch-approved, delivered and ready to use – the Vaccine Operations Centre reports a wastage rate of 1 per cent (or 130,000 doses).
It’s not quite use it or lose it, but the Sydney outbreak changes the AstraZeneca equation.
“These vaccines work,” Mr Morrison said.
“The vaccines mean that you’re less likely to get Covid, you’re less likely to transmit Covid, you’re less likely to get serious illness from Covid, and you’re less likely to die from Covid.”
Australia needs to be saturated in that messaging.
Join the conversation
Israel a ‘miracle’, says Labor senator
Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill has condemned the rise of anti-Semitism, as politicians from both sides of politics paused to commemorate October 7 in Canberra.
Read more
Bosses demand CFMEU clause ban
Employers say the CFMEU administrator’s ‘business as usual’ approach to bargaining will not address the union’s ‘disgraceful’ illegal tactics.
Read more