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COVID-19 vaccine supply problems may push national rollout into 2022
By Rachel Clun
Some Australians may have to wait until early next year for their second shot of a COVID-19 vaccine due to supply problems, although the government still hopes to be finished by the end of October.
Top government health officials also said it was “impossible to predict” exactly when the first 4 million people would receive their first dose, a milestone initially expected by the end of the month.
Vaccine supply had been “a significant issue” in the early stages of the vaccine program, Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy said.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy told a parliamentary COVID committee hearing on Thursday afternoon some people might have had only their first dose by the end of October.
“The great majority of people will have had two vaccines by then, and everyone will have had one, and it’s a semantic difference where there are a small proportion who have to come back a little bit later for their second dose,” he said.
Almost three weeks into the national COVID-19 vaccine rollout, 125,000 people have received their first dose. The federal government has previously said phase 1a, covering almost 680,000 aged care residents, healthcare workers and quarantine staff, will be completed within six weeks.
The government has also repeatedly said all adults who want it will be vaccinated by the end of October.
Health Department associate secretary Caroline Edwards said all first doses would be delivered by October, but conceded the 12-week wait between AstraZeneca doses recommended by Australia’s expert vaccine taskforce meant some people might not receive their second dose until mid-January.
“If we don’t succeed to have everyone have two doses [by the end of October] then it inevitably follows that your second dose will be 12 weeks after that in accordance with the protocol,” she said. “But that will be the end date if it goes beyond October and we’ve said all along we’re planning to finish both doses by October if we possibly can.”
In January, the government expected 4 million people to have received their first dose by the end of March. That milestone was later pushed to early April, but Labor senator Katy Gallagher questioned on Thursday whether that was still achievable.
“It would be impossible to predict exactly when we will hit 4 million until we know what the CSL [local] production capability will be like, what the further international supplies will be like,” Professor Murphy said.
Vaccine supply had been “a significant issue” in the early stages of the vaccine program, he said.
“We haven’t had access to the international doses that we thought we would, because we thought we would get 3.8 million AstraZeneca doses,” he said. “The Pfizer vaccine supply chain has also been limited but it’s predictable.”
Issues with the aged care rollout had also slowed the program down, Professor Murphy said, noting discussions between families, residents and providers over vaccination consent had been taking longer than expected.
“The providers have found it more complicated too, even though they did lots of modelling,” he said.
When Greens senator Rachel Siewert asked what the delivery schedule was for all 20 million Pfizer vaccines, Professor Murphy said while the department received predictions weeks in advance from the company, all Pfizer would commit to was delivering all doses by the end of the year.
“At the moment, the only guarantee they’ll give us is that we will get it by the end of this year,” he said. “We’re hoping it’ll be earlier than that and we’ll get most of it well before that, but we have no guarantees from Pfizer other than 20 million by the end of the year.”
The government has had to keep half of the 1.3 million doses already imported aside for second doses, but once CSL starts delivering 1 million doses a week of the locally produced AstraZeneca vaccine the rollout will ramp up.
“We will scale up very rapidly to complete the first clinical milestone, which in my view is the completion of all of phase one,” Professor Murphy said. “That will mean that we have effectively protected the most vulnerable Australians.”
Phase 1, covering almost 7 million people, was expected to be finished by the middle of the year, Professor Murphy said.