Flu jabs a sticking point in coronavirus vaccine rollout

Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout faces being paused only weeks after it starts in March as an impending clash with seasonal flu prevention heaps pressure on a tight timetable.

A box of AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine vials in Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales on Monday. Picture: AFP

Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout faces being paused only weeks after it starts in March as an impending clash with seasonal flu prevention heaps pressure on a tight timetable to cover the population before winter sets it.

The first stocks of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, earmarked by the government as the prime protector, won’t land in the country until next month, further limiting options to speed delivery of the COVID jab. Immunisation Coalition chief executive Kim Sampson warned that the logistic and potential medical challenges of vaccinating people against both the coronavirus and 2021 influenza strains could force the COVID program to be suspended or slowed during April and May.

“I doubt whether we would be wanting to have both vaccines pushed out at the same,” he told The Australian. “There would be a convenience aspect to it — you go to your GP to get two jabs — but we don’t know whether that is doable, whether you can roll up your sleeve and have the flu vaccine in your left arm and the COVID vaccine in your right arm.

“There are still a lot of unknowns there … but the one thing we do know is that people have to be vaccinated against influenza and there is a finite period of time in which to do that in April-May. So it would seem to me let’s get that out of the way first.”

The Immunisation Coalition, a pro-vax group backed by key players such as the Australian Medical Association and Australian College of Nursing, also has urged the government to convert hospital fever clinics and testing stations into COVID vaccination centres.

Mr Sampson said he understood this was being considered by Health Minister Greg Hunt.

In addition to the 53.8 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca offering, Canberra has contracted to buy 51 million doses of the American Novavax vaccine and 10 million doses of the Pfizer-BioN­Tech vaccine that has been given emergency-use authorisation by US and British regulators.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was approved last week in Britain but no vaccine has yet been cleared for use here by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the government is resisting pressure from the opposition and business to accelerate the process.

The Australian understands that 3.8 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive from Europe next month in time for the rollout to start in early March, subject to a greenlight from the TGA. The bulk of the order will be manufactured under licence in Melbourne by CSL.

But even if the TGA approved the vaccine in the next few weeks and AstraZeneca brought forward delivery, there was little room to deviate from a start date that had already been advanced from late March to the beginning of the month, government sources said.

The vaccine must be batch tested, which takes about two weeks, then distributed across the country. While Mr Hunt said on Wednesday that he was not ruling out “further steps” to fast-track the rollout, the Australian timetable reflected those of New Zealand and Asian countries that had contained the virus.

“We’ve been able to bring our vaccination commencement schedule forward from the middle of the year to the second quarter, to late March and now to early March. And I’m not ruling out further steps,” he told 2GB.

“But what I am saying is that there’s a group — Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan — different jurisdictions that are arguably among the most successful countries in combating the virus. All are committed to an expedited assessment process, safety process, but a full safety assessment process.

“And all of those countries are, in terms of Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia and the jurisdiction of Taiwan, they’re all looking at a very similar timeframe. So it puts us in the group of countries that have been highly successful but are absolutely thorough.”

CSL is ramping up its vaccine-making plant in Broadmeadows in Melbourne’s northwest after receiving $300m from the federal government to retool to produce the Oxford-AstraZeneca formulation and the locally developed University of Queensland vaccine that failed last month.

But it is expected that Pfizer’s mRNA immuniser will be the first given to Australians — another challenge when it is required to be refrigerated at minus-70C while being transported.