No need for mass Covid-19 jab sites, say doctors

Doctors are resisting plans for mass vaccination hubs for those aged 50 to 70.

Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid.

Doctors are resisting plans for mass vaccination hubs for those aged 50 to 70 by the middle of the year, as airlines cast doubt on whether the international border will be reopened by October.

After placing the national cabinet on a “warlike footing” in a bid to get the vaccine rollout back on track, Scott Morrison said Australia’s political leaders would on Monday consider options to establish large sites for people aged 50-70 to receive the AstraZeneca jab by June or July.

Those aged under 50 could have access to vaccination hubs from October, when 20 million more Pfizer doses and the Novavax vaccine are expected to become available.

Under the “recalibrated” plan, unveiled by the Prime Minister during a three-day visit to Western Australia, all adults would be given their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year.

“We’ll have to change our delivery method because we would like to see this done before the end of the year, but that will only be possible if we can ensure that we have the mass vaccination program in place,” Mr Morrison said.

“Mass vaccination could be an option earlier, say in June or July, for those over-50 groups that are in the balance of the population.”

But Omar Khorshid, the head of the Australian Medical Association, said “we don’t need mass vaccination centres for the AstraZeneca vaccine” because it was being effectively administered by general practitioners.

Dr Khorshid will offer advice to Mr Morrison on the vaccine rollout on Thursday. “We are not ­supportive of mass vaccination centres for 50- to 70-year-olds using AstraZeneca because that means you’ll have to take those vaccines out of the hands of the practitioners who are quite capably administering the vaccines to Australians in phase 1B now. The limitation to the GP rollout has been access to vaccines, not the ­capacity of general practice to ­deliver,” Dr Khorshid said.

“We have only just got to 4500 practices this week (administering the vaccines), and there are another 4000 practices around the country that could participate at some point if we need them.”

Dr Khorshid also questioned where the workforce for mass vaccination centres would come from, noting there were not huge numbers of doctors and nurses “doing nothing”.

He was in favour of large, state-run hubs for Australians under 50 receiving the Pfizer vaccine, which is now the preferred option for that age group due to a very rare blood clot disorder linked to the AstraZeneca jab in younger people.

Senior government sources said it was too early to say if mass vaccination hubs, rather than GPs, would become the main method of administering COVID-19 doses.

All types of buildings and locations for mass sites would be discussed, including stadiums and convention centres, they said.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said GPs and the states needed to work closely together on the rollout, and those Australians aged over 50 with an underlying health condition should be immunised at their local GP.

“We’ve been approaching this with an enormous sense of urgency, because having the majority of our population vaccinated does give us more freedom and does point us in the direction the rest of the world seems to be heading,” Ms Berejiklian said.

In the face of demands from business for a clear timeline for the international border to reopen, Mr Morrison warned there would be potentially large numbers of COVID-19 cases after the inter­national border was lifted. He said the country would need to be “confident and comfortable” that it was in the national interest.

Qantas boss Alan Joyce conceded the resumption of inter­national travel could happen later than October 31, in response to the blowout in the federal government’s vaccination timeline.

In February, the airline pushed back its return to international flights from July to late October, based on the assumption that the majority of Australians would be vaccinated by then.

Mr Joyce said the government had been unable to provide a clear picture of when borders would reopen. “They can’t give us that date with certainty today because there are a lot of things it depends on: how effective the vaccine is against stopping transmission; what the rollout looks like; what proportion of the population will have been vaccinated; and what the success of other countries is going to look like,” Mr Joyce said.

“If it happens earlier, we can adapt, or if it happens later, and it could happen later, we just adapt and use it.”

On Wednesday, the premiers endorsed Mr Morrison’s plan to return the national cabinet to biweekly meetings from Monday.

The federal government has blamed a lack of AstraZeneca vaccines from offshore and the new medical advice regarding blood clots for major setbacks to the rollout, which led Mr Morrison to scrap an October deadline to give all adults their first dose.

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler said mass vaccination sites should already be in use.

“The Prime Minister needs to give clear advice and targets for when Australians will receive their vaccines,” he said.

Additional reporting: Natasha Robinson, Amos Aikman, Max Maddison