Why so coy on Covid-19 vaccine success?

Amid all of the statistics delivered by the federal government on the vaccine rollout, there is one glaring omission that is the most important number of all: the number of Australians fully vaccinated.

Australia is one of the only countries in the world failing to publicly report the number of people who are fully vaccinated.

It is a baffling omission. When asked the reason, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt explained the public reporting of vaccine data is in line with what has been agreed in national cabinet. But this explanation does not make a lot of sense considering some states – NSW, Victoria and Western Australia – are reporting second doses of vaccines administered.

Much hinges on the proportion of Australians who are fully vaccinated. It’s the key to opening borders, for a start. It’s a far more important statistic than a simple tally of number of vaccines administered.

Anthony Macali is a data analyst and founder of COVID LIVE, which tracks vaccinations, case numbers and testing numbers in Australia. Mr Macali’s data feeds into Our World in Data, which tracks vaccinations globally and is accessed by hundreds of millions of people. There is data for the number of people fully vaccinated for virtually every country listed on the Our World in Data page – except Australia.

“It’s pretty embarrassing that we still haven’t started reporting people fully vaccinated,” he says. “That’s ultimately the end goal of the whole rollout. We’ve had targets come and go over time, and I understand that. But the main goal is to get everyone fully vaccinated and we have some kind of indicators but we don’t know the full picture yet.”

So what do we know?

The federal government does track the number of second doses delivered in aged care. In total, 123,700 people in aged care are fully vaccinated. About 180,000 people live in aged-care facilities.

Of people who received a vaccine at NSW hospital-based hubs and mass vaccination centres, 84,963 are fully vaccinated from a total of 195,172 who have received at least one dose.

In Victoria, 62,267 people are fully vaccinated out of a total of 251,272 who received at least one dose at a state-based hub or mass centre. And in WA, 29,679 people are fully vaccinated out of a total of 100,970 who have received at least one dose.

“It really puzzles me why the government isn’t publishing the percentage of people fully vaccinated,” says Burnet Institute epidemiologist Mike Toole. “That’s the golden indicator. All of the data is available. All shots are registered on MyGov.

“If we just vaccinate a lot of people with one dose, that doesn’t reflect any level of protection because you need that second dose. That should be the headline indicator of success.”

Surely that’s a success all governments should be shouting from the rooftops.