Pfizer leads race for COVID-19 vaccine rollout

Pfizer is likely to win Australia’s coronavirus vaccine race, as Greg Hunt says several anti-COVID inoculations are ahead of schedule.

A health worker holds the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Mexico City. Picture: AFP

Global pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is likely to win Australia’s coronavirus vaccine race, as Health Minister Greg Hunt says several anti-COVID inoculations are ahead of schedule.

The Morrison government is sticking to its plan to approve and roll out a coronavirus vaccine in March, but producers such as­ ­AstraZeneca — makers of the so-called Oxford vaccine — expect to get their final data to the drug ­approval authorities by January.

Mr Hunt said the Morrison government would start the rollout with the first approved vaccine, but he expected others to quickly follow.

“It’s likely that Pfizer will have the first of the approvals, on the latest advice from the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and we’ve been working with them and signing the final agreement on distribution,” he said.

“We’ll begin with whichever vaccine has first approval and delivery. With the Oxford vaccine, we’re expecting 3.8 million units in Australia before the end of February, with production of the first batch in Australia already complete — and now it goes to what is called the fill and finish.”

More than 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine (a person needs two doses to reach immunity) were secured by the government on Christmas Eve and are expected to cover 5 million Australians.

Pfizer’s was the first vaccine to be approved in the US, Britain, Canada, the Middle East and the EU in the past month, as the world faces a devastating third wave of COVID-19. American company Moderna’s vaccine has also been approved in the US and Canada.

AstraZeneca’s Oxford vaccine is on the cusp of approval in Britain and it is now claiming similarly high efficacy numbers as the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

Mr Hunt spoke with AstraZeneca global chief Pascal Soriat on Monday and said their vaccine was progressing quickly through international drug regulators.

 

“It’s not just on track, we’re hopeful we’ll have both domestic production and international ­imports ahead of schedule. And I think that’s reassuring, reaffirming, and an important point of hope,” Mr Hunt said.

“Second, the progress through international regulators is ahead of where I previously understood it to be. They don’t have all the data in yet, but the results are good — and that means that we’ll have, subject to our Australian regulators agreeing, a safe, effective and plentiful vaccine.”

Australia has secured 53.8 million doses of the Oxford vaccine via both domestic production and international imports next year.

Anthony Albanese and Labor have called for the vaccine rollout to be accelerated in light of the ­recent northern beaches outbreak in Sydney and the current mass vaccinations that are taking place in other Western countries.

But Mr Hunt said on Monday the government was sticking to March as a date for the rollout.

“Our approach is to underpromise and overdeliver; we are in the hands of the data,” he said.

“We’re expecting the final data in late January from both of the leading candidates. Then we have to make sure that we test the physical stock.

“That’s a 14-day process. It’s not something that has necessarily been done in other countries, but it is something which the regulator recommends for Australia.”