Vaccine army doubles coronavirus fight
The number of vaccine medical centres will double this week with inoculations on track to top one million within days.
The number of medical centres delivering the COVID-19 vaccine will double this week as the federal government tries to accelerate the program after a slow month, with inoculations on track to top one million within days.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said there had been a record take-up last week — with 79,283 immunisations on Thursday alone — as he sought to reboot the relationship with the states ahead of a national cabinet meeting this Friday. The Federal government has been slammed for missing the target of 4 million vaccinations by the end of March.
The government has delivered 387,605 vaccinations, including 111,873 in aged care, across 1270 centres. The residents of 345 of these homes had received both required doses, Mr Hunt said.
The rollout is proceeding after experts with the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation and regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration gave the go-ahead to continue administering the locally made AstraZeneca vaccine after a Victorian man developed blood clots, a side-effect that caused some European countries and Canada to pause its use among various age groups.
More than 3000 medical centres will offer AstraZeneca and the imported Pfizer vaccine this week, up from 1500, before the program is expanded to 4000 sites by the end of the month.
With 841,885 people vaccinated as of Saturday, the one-million mark for coverage should be comfortably met this week, an important milestone when the blame game with the states is deepening over their claims Canberra has bungled the distribution of doses. Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas said the federal government needed to acknowledge there was a problem getting the vaccine out and ask the states for help. “They’re supposed to do two-thirds of the job of vaccination of the population,” he said on Sunday. “We’re charged with the responsibility of doing a third. We’re on track and it would appear they are having difficulties.”
Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said criticism that the rollout to GPs had failed “just doesn’t stack up”.
“We’re very comfortable with the government’s plan and looking forward to many more general practices offering the vaccine this week and increasing these numbers to the 3000 mark and to 4500 by the end of the first four weeks,” he told The Australian.
“Unlike others who say this can’t be done in GP clinics, we disagree with this. GPs are tried and tested in vaccination.
“The only thing limiting us is the supply of vaccine, which is ramping up.”
Former Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Ayman Shenouda, now operating a clinic in Wagga Wagga, said GPs were the “natural place” to deliver the vaccine.
“They have the trust of the patient and access to patients. It’s a wise decision,” he said.
Mr Hunt insisted the rollout would accelerate as locally manufactured supplies of the AstraZeneca shot from CSL came on line, allowing distribution to be sharply stepped up.
Rejecting complaints that GPs had been left in the lurch when vaccine shipments failed to arrive on time, he said “every one” of the 1500 clinics participating in the program last week had been supplied, despite floods in NSW and southern Queensland.
“It was just an incredible delivery process where that was able to occur,” Mr Hunt said. “It did mean there was some where it was a day or two later; we’ve had individual cases where perhaps an order might not have been placed. So that’s fine.
“We have been able to backfill and what we are seeing is deliveries over the weekend … by the end of this week we will have over 3000 practices, commonwealth respiratory clinics and Aboriginal-controlled community health organisations delivering and that’s … to my mind, that’s an extraordinary outcome and what’s underpinning the rollout.”
A spokeswoman for CSL, which is making the AstraZeneca vaccine under licence in Melbourne, said the company was on track to deliver on its commitment to the government to supply more than one million doses a week but declined to provide timings.
Mr Hunt on Sunday spoke to his NSW counterpart, Brad Hazzard, after the Liberal minister accused him of a “breach of faith” for releasing state distribution figures and went after the federal government for “dumping” tens of thousands of doses without warning.
Describing the conversation as “100 per cent positive”, Mr Hunt made no apology for updating the numbers showing the NSW Coalition government had delivered 126,000 doses, followed by Victoria on 116,000 and Queensland on 87,000 “but if there are any other proposals, we are always happy to work with them … every day we are adapting and adopting”.
After Queensland-based Defence Minister Peter Dutton slammed last week’s three-day lockdown of Greater Brisbane as a “kneejerk” and panicked response, Deputy Premier Steven Miles hit back, saying it might not have been needed had the federal government hit the target to vaccinate four million people. “You would think on Easter Sunday the Morrison government could take a day off attacking our Premier,” he said of Annastacia Palaszczuk.
In Melbourne, Mr Pallas said the federal government was trying to build a distribution system from scratch when states and territories already had the structures and capacity to do the job.
Additional reporting: Rhiannon Down, Rachel Baxendale, Rosie Lewis
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