Vaccine rollout derailed in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea has administered fewer than half of the AstraZeneca jabs donated to the country by Australia more than a month ago, amid rampant vaccine hesitancy.

A makeshift coronavirus clinic in a sports stadium in Port Moresby. Picture: AFP

Papua New Guinea has administered fewer than half of 8500 AstraZeneca jabs donated to the country by Australia more than a month ago, amid rampant vaccine hesitancy.

Despite a full-blown COVID crisis sweeping PNG, Health Minister Jelta Wong said only about 3500 doses had been used because authorities were having difficulties convincing frontline workers to be vaccinated.

Australia, which delivered 8480 vaccine doses to PNG in late March, has pledged to donate a further one million European-made AstraZeneca doses to PNG, plus 10,000 jabs a week from Australia’s domestic supply.

PNG has also received more than 100,000 vaccine doses from the World Health Organisation-backed COVAX facility.

But Mr Wong said the vaccine rollout was being derailed by internet misinformation claiming Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates wanted to use the vaccine to reduce the world’s population. “They have this thing that Bill Gates is trying (to establish) a new world order,” he told The Australian.

The claim is sweeping the country via Facebook, with the endorsement of some public figures including Madang Province Governor Peter Yama.

The latest publicly available figures reveal PNG recorded 82 new COVID cases on Tuesday, taking the national total to 10,997, including 107 known deaths.

But those numbers are believed to dramatically understate the true extent of the crisis, due to low testing rates and poor communication between provincial and national health authorities.

Mr Wong said the situation was “pretty tense”, with the nation’s network of hospitals and health clinics stretched to the limit. “All of them are struggling,” he said. “We are full to capacity. What we try to do is get money out to them as well as equipment and food.”

Lowy Institute Pacific program director Jonathan Pryke said there was a “perfect storm” working against PNG’s vaccine rollout.

“If logistics, topography and an already stretched to the limit health system weren’t enough we have misinformation spreading faster than the virus,” he said.

“Of course, it doesn’t help that here in Australia we’ve paused AstraZeneca rollouts in under 50. That sends a terrible message to Papua New Guineans who don’t have the luxury of choice in the vaccines they have access to.

“We need to start getting more proactive. Of course this must be PNG-led but the government has its hands full.

“Anything we can do – be it engaging with Facebook, hiring a communications team to design a comprehensive education campaign, logistics, you name it – we should be doing it.”

A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman said: “Australia continues to work methodically alongside PNG authorities to administer vaccines in both a safe and timely manner to the community.”

PNG’s COVID controller David Manning said more than 103,000 frontline workers – including hospital and clinic staff, police and quarantine workers – were listed to be vaccinated with COVAX-donated jabs under a national rollout plan.

Surging infection numbers in PNG are raising alarm bells in Australia, with high numbers of passengers from Port Moresby testing positive to the virus when they arrive on flights to Queensland. In a blunder on Thursday, a PNG passenger who later tested positive to COVID was allowed into the “green zone” at Brisbane airport to mingle with trans-Tasman travellers.