Scott Morrison appeals to experts: relax Covid-19 vaccine rule

Scott Morrison has made a public appeal for the nation’s vaccine experts to change their advice on the safety of administering the AstraZeneca jab to under-60s to help accelerate take-up rates.

Scott Morrison in Canberra on Wednesday. Picture: Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison has made a public appeal for the nation’s vaccine experts to change their advice on the safety of administering the AstraZeneca jab to under-60s to help accelerate take-up rates and improve coverage in the midst of a worsening Covid-19 crisis.

On Wednesday, the Prime Minister implored Australians to talk to their doctors about getting the AstraZeneca jab and pressured state premiers to use their supplies of the jab instead of waiting for Pfizer.

With half the nation and nearly 14 million people in lockdown, Mr Morrison also put pressure on state premiers to accept the vaccination thresholds he will take to national cabinet in coming weeks to reopen the country.

Mr Morrison’s plea to the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) to change its AstraZeneca advice led to a quick backlash from the nation’s leading medical group and Labor.

But Mr Morrison said his government was making a “constant appeal” to the vaccine expert panel to reconsider the balance of risk given the spread of the Delta strain of Covid-19.

“It’s a constant appeal. I can assure you. It’s a constant appeal that the situation Australia faces should be managed on the balance of risk, as ATAGI has said to me in the past,” Mr Morrison said at The Lodge.

On Wednesday, ATAGI co-chairman Allen Cheng said the panel was meeting weekly to consider the use of AstraZeneca, and they were still looking closely at its links to blood clots.

Despite growing supply of Pfizer coming in from overseas, Mr Morrison said the states should not allow hundreds of thousands of AstraZeneca doses – many made here in Australia – to go to waste.

NSW Health Secretary Elizabeth Koff wrote to the federal government this week asking them to redeploy 150,000 AstraZeneca vaccines to GPs and pharmacists, though NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the supply issue was with Pfizer.

“There’s plenty of AstraZeneca around. That’s not the issue. It’s the Pfizer,” Mr Hazzard said.

Mr Morrison urged under-60s to hold conversations with their doctors about receiving the AstraZeneca jab.

“My message is that people should be getting vaccinated as soon as possible with the vaccines available for them,” he said.

On Wednesday, Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid slammed Mr Morrison for putting ATAGI under “unfair pressure” and said the government had to take responsibility for its decisions in the vaccine program.

“We are certainly concerned that the experts … are under unfair pressure. At the end of the day, this is an advisory body. The government and the Minister for Health make the decisions, not ATAGI,” Dr Khorshid said.

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler accused Mr Morrison of using his position to pressure ATAGI, while health experts were divided over the Prime Minister’s comments that he was constantly appealing to ATAGI to reconsider AstraZeneca’s balance of risk and benefit.

Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of NSW, John Dwyer, said he did not believe it was appropriate for Mr Morrison to publicly state that he was appealing to ATAGI, but on the other hand, the advisory group had been too conservative in its advice.

Australian National University Professor Shane Thomas said he believed Mr Morrison was right to continually question ATAGI’s advice.