Get some answers but the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is in safe hands

There are serious questions over how a doctor who had not received training came to administer the Pfizer vaccine at St Vincent’s Care Services in Brisbane.

But the dosing error and the apparent negligence of the contractor who employed the doctor, Healthcare Australia, is not cause for wider concern about the safety of the vaccine rollout in hospitals and nursing homes across the country.

The two elderly residents who were the unfortunate victims of the error are not ill, and Pfizer has given similar doses that they received to volunteers in clinical trials with no adverse effects.

Clearly the error should not have happened, and it is hard to imagine how the doctor got the dosing so wrong. But in almost every other site where vaccines are being administered, competent, careful and judicious doctors and nurses are administering thousands of doses without incident, with multiple layers of checks and balances that should foster a high degree of confidence.

It is a tribute to the nursing workforce that the doctor’s error was picked up so promptly. The reports that the doctor left the facility without checking on the welfare of the patients he had incorrectly dosed are deeply concerning and point to this being an issue with the clinical standards of one practitioner, rather than there being a system-wide issue.

That’s not to say there should not be lessons in this for the federal government. Despite contracting out the administration of vaccines in aged-care facilities, the commonwealth’s duty of care is just as acute as if its staff were administering the vaccines. Rigorous control must be maintained over the program and, make no mistake, there will be no stone left unturned now to ensure every doctor and nurse administering a vaccine in aged care has completed the mandatory training. Those checks to ensure the contractors were meeting their obligations should have occurred before now.

Much can be learned by the healthcare organisations working to deliver vaccines in aged care from the hospital hubs, which have been simulating how to deliver vaccines from multi-dose vials for weeks. It is important this real-world training is done with every doctor or nurse who is hired to deliver vaccines in aged care.

All of these measures will improve what is already in the vast majority of cases a seamless process of vaccine administration conducted by professionals who hold the welfare of our elderly in the highest regard. This incident should give us no reason to doubt these professionals, and our health system, to deliver a vaccine rollout in a system characterised by the highest safety standards in the world.