Covid-19: Million doses of AstraZeneca available but NSW won’t ask

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard. Picture: Getty Images

The NSW government could have one million doses of AstraZeneca tomorrow. The problem is that it hasn’t been asking for them.

This seems to contradict what NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has been saying about not being able to get vaccines into the state.

GPs and pharmacists have been asking for AstraZeneca and they have been getting it. But not the NSW government.

The argument that the federal government’s vaccine program, as troubled as it has been, is somehow responsible for the predicament NSW is now in simply doesn’t stack up.

The vaccination rates in NSW are less about supply than the state government’s refusal to take up the one million doses on offer.

So far NSW has the lowest take-up of AstraZeneca of any state. It is the second highest in terms of GPs, but that is driven through the federal government.

The argument that there is no demand for AstraZeneca, as ­pushed by the NSW government and certainly aided by some of its recent commentary, isn’t necessarily true either.

It may have been a month ago. Again, this is borne out by the numbers.

There is no doubt that the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation helped cripple the vaccine rollout over its constantly changing advice on AstraZeneca. Since then Scott Morrison has been forced to ­engage in a reputational repair job and start to get AstraZeneca rates back up again.

 

He hasn’t been helped by Hazzard, who last week made it clear that he thought AstraZeneca was inferior to Pfizer. This is also ­untrue.

According to the Australian Immunisation Register, since June 28 there have been 73,028 AstraZeneca jabs administered to people under the age of 30.

Of these, 29,043 were administered in the past seven days. Of those, 7264 were administered in the 24 hours up until Friday, which was the highest volume since June. Among 40 to 59-year-olds, there have been 93,919 jabs ­administered, 24,677 of them in the past seven days and 4932 of those in the 24 hours to Friday – the second-highest rate since June.

Demand for AstraZeneca is clearly accelerating and has been since the Sydney outbreak and since Morrison went about trying to undo the damage that ATAGI, Hazzard and Queensland chief health officer Jeanette Young have caused.

If the NSW government wants to stick by its claim that vaccination is the key to getting people out of lockdown, then it has a ­solution on hand in the form of one million AstraZeneca doses that could be delivered today.