Vaccine war puts AstraZeneca supply in doubt

AstraZeneca has refused to commit to providing Australia with any more doses of overseas-produced vaccines anytime soon as the EU escalated its threats to block their export.

A nurse administers the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to a patient at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

AstraZeneca has refused to commit to providing Australia with any more doses of overseas-produced vaccines anytime soon as the European Union escalated its threats to block the export of more doses and canvassed seizing the company’s factory production, ­intellectual property rights and patents.

The dramatic escalation of vaccine nationalism in Europe came as Australia finally hit a national target of vaccinating at least 80,000 people a week.

About 240,000 people have now been vaccinated in Australia. It’s still way short of the original four million target, now abandoned, that was to be hit by the end of the March.

There are still questions as to why more vaccines have not been administered, with 1.3 million doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca delivered from Europe so far. Half of that amount has been held back by the commonwealth for second doses, but some states, in particular Queensland, continue to face criticism that they are stockpiling and not administering their full ­allocation of vaccine.

AstraZeneca said on Thursday that its focus was now on local supply and declined to say when any further doses from Europe would be provided. Australia is pushing for AstraZeneca to ­urgently supply one million doses that Australia wants to send to PNG. The pharmaceutical giant was to have delivered 3.8 million doses in March, but only about 700,000 have arrived.

“AstraZeneca is committed to supporting the Australian government’s vaccination strategy, which commenced with overseas delivery in late February and ­remains on track for locally manufactured doses to be available from next week,” AstraZeneca said. “With local production continuing weekly from that point, our primary focus is on supporting the local rollout, which is providing the majority of doses for ­Australia.”

The locally produced AstraZeneca vaccine has still not been given approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Health Minister Greg Hunt said the ­approval was expected “in the coming days”, with vaccines ­already being delivered to GP surgeries.

Mr Hunt said that the government was “ahead of schedule” for delivering COVID vaccines to GPs and 100 commonwealth clinics ahead of the next phase of the rollout, which will see six million Australians vaccinated, including older people and those with underlying medical conditions.

But NSW Premier Gladys ­Berejiklian has warned that her state will not achieve its target of vaccinating six million residents by October unless the commonwealth communicates more ­effectively with the states about the number of doses ­available and ­increases the numbers of those ­administering the vaccines.

“If we’re serious about vaccinating six million NSW people by the end of October we need to have everybody on board, all the GPs, pharmacists, and also all of the 100 NSW health hubs as well,” she said.

Her warning came after the federal government’s vaccine booking system failed to operate on the day of its launch, with doctors’ surgeries caught off-guard by the number of inquiries.

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler blasted the pace of the commonwealth rollout, declaring these systems should have been in place well before Australia received shipments of the vaccine from overseas.

Additional reporting: Jacquelin Magnay