‘Plenty’ of Covid-19 boosters to go around, says Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison has sought to assure Australians there are ‘plenty’ of Covid-19 booster vaccines doses available following warnings about practitioners running out of stock.

Syringes carrying doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. Picture: AFP

Scott Morrison has sought to assure Australians there are “plenty” of Covid-19 booster vaccines doses available following warnings from GPs and pharmacies about practitioners running out of stock.

The Prime Minister’s assurance came ahead of an “informal” unscheduled national cabinet meeting with state and territory leaders on Tuesday.

Federal Labor has criticised the booster rollout, saying the nation is falling behind the pace of other developed countries.

The nation’s booster rollout ramped up sharply last week after the wait time for third shots was reduced from six to five months in response to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The shortened time frame, pre-Christmas rush and funding cuts for the booster programs have created a bottleneck for those seeking a top-up shot this month.

But Mr Morrison said there were 13 million booster shots currently in Australia

“There are plenty of doses and plenty of points of presence,” he said. “As the time frame was reduce from six to five (months) there was some pressure but that’s been overcome now.”

Lieutenant General John Frewen, who heads the vaccine program, insisted there were no issues of supply of vaccine for boosters despite GPs and pharmacists’ reporting running out of stock.

They say they were caught off guard by the change in advice to bring booster shots forward to five months and have been inundated with patients.

“I can tell you from GP land that there is a Covid-19 booster supply issue,” tweeted prominent GP Kerryn Phelps in response to assurances to the contrary from the federal government.

General Frewen said if doctors had run out of vaccine they could order more within days, despite some medicos telling patients they wouldn’t have stock again until January.

“There is absolutely no concern with supply and we are working with all GPs and pharmacies and state and territory hubs to make sure there is the appropriate distribution to ensure we can meet demand,” General Frewen said.

The federal health department said there were 5.9 million doses of vaccine in pharmacies, GPs and state clinics that had been delivered but not yet administered.

“Appointments for a booster continue to be available around the country. There are more than 4592 clinics with appointments available online and most have a waiting time of one to three days,” the department said.

 

The number of people getting booster shots each day is picking up strongly, with 135,000 getting a third shot on Thursday last week.

More than 1.2 million people have had a booster to date in Australia. Just over four million are currently eligible, and in January another 3.4 million people will ­become eligible for a booster, rising to four million in February and 4.5 million in March.

Australia has reached the milestone of more than 90 per cent of people fully vaccinated with two shots but is lagging on booster shots as a proportion of total population.

Arrangements have been put in place to ensure primary care providers are able to receive emergency supplies of Covid-19 vaccine over the Christmas and new year period as people panicked by the Omicron variant rush to get their third shots.

Oxford University’s vaccination database shows that of Australia’s total population just 5.2 per cent have received their third shot. This compares to Chile’s 52 per cent and the United Arab Emirates and Malta at 33 per cent.

Among OECD countries, ­Australia ranks equal eighth for double-dose vaccination but ahead of only Costa Rice on booster shots.

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler called on the commonwealth to speed up the booster program as he pointed to the global data that shows Australia “ranks right down the bottom” compared to other countries’ delivery of top-up doses.

“Of the 70 countries that are reporting on their booster program around the world, Australia is currently ranking 65th,” Mr Butler told the ABC.

“We are going so slowly under Scott Morrison’s booster program that we’re dangerously exposed to a variant that we know can defeat two shots.”

Mr Butler said there was “no way” Australia would deliver the four million booster shots due this month.

“The booster program has been running for six weeks. So far we’ve done a little more than one million boosters,” he said.

“By the end of next week, we have to have delivered four million. Four million people are supposed to receive their booster shots this month.”

The latest federal government data has also showed childhood vaccination rates for non-Covid jabs remains at a record high, boosting confidence about take-up rates for the 5-11-year-old vaccination program.

Health authorities have said that while vaccines have reduced efficacy against the Omicron variant in terms of transmission and symptomatic illness, two doses still offer protection against severe disease.

The Oxford database shows that, despite Australia’s surge in cases in recent weeks since states lifted restrictions, on a per-capita basis the rates of cases and deaths are much lower than most fellow OECD countries.

Australia has recorded 2047 new Covid cases per million people in the past four weeks, compared with almost 22,000 in the UK and as many as 38,883 in the Czech Republic.

On deaths, only Japan, New Zealand and Iceland have a better rate than Australia’s 7.9 per million people in the past four weeks among OECD countries. But many European countries have death rates of more than 100 people per million, topped by Hungary’s 491.7.

The power of vaccinations is shown in the data, with a strong correlation between high vaccination rates and lower death rates in the past four weeks.