Vaccines arrive in Australia. Now the challenge begins
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What milestone did Australia reach with the arrival of the Pfizer vaccine?
This is an ABC podcast. Hello, welcome to Coronacast, a podcast all about the coronavirus. I'm health reporter Tegan Taylor.
And I'm physician and journalist Dr Norman Swan. It's Tuesday the 16th of February 2021.
That's right. And yesterday we marked a really significant milestone in the weird coronavirus pandemic year that we've been having, Norman. The first doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, which has been approved for use by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, touched down in Australia, ready to start rolling them out next week to the high priority groups. So a big milestone. What does the next phase actually look like, though, the rollout?
Well, I think a lot of it's been left to the states. I suspect that what you'll see is remarkable uniformity, which is the first line of defence and the first line of people who are most vulnerable, as we've seen again and again and again, are people who are working on our borders, driving buses, transporting people from the airport and working in hotels, looking after people who've just arrived. So those are the people who will be immunised first, I would imagine, right around the country. That will protect them. They will get the Pfizer vaccine mostly, which is good because that gives the most chance of reducing transmission if they do get infected, as well as protecting them against disease. And then it's aged care and high priority health care workers, so frontline health care workers.
That's that first phase. And we haven't heard too much of exactly who's going to do what where in terms of administering vaccines yet. I know that a lot of general practices have volunteered and we do have a good network of general practices, so it should be okay. But I am getting anecdotal feedback from various parts of Australia saying they're really, from people in the business if you like, who are saying they're really not sure what the plans are.
How will the first phase of the vaccine rollout be organised and who will get it first?
So I think it's still a work in progress. But the first phase should go okay, one would hope. And then there's a process where the Commonwealth is taking responsibility for aged care and getting enough doses out into aged care, which are our most vulnerable communities, should the vaccine escape into the general community.
Right. One of the questions that we're getting a lot of from people, from audience members, is will we be notified when it's our turn? But we don't know that yet.
Yes, I'm not sure how that is indeed going to work. But I assume that there are ways through Medicare numbers and other means that the government can, you know, tax file number. I don't know, but I assume there are ways of finding out who you are and what you've got and assume that also that your general practitioner can help out too. But I think those are the sorts of things that are not entirely clear how people will be identified individually.
So the scale of vaccinating an entire country, even one with a relatively small population like Australia, is a massive ask. So we heard last week World Health Organization expert advisor from the University of New South Wales, Mary Louise McLaws, saying that we're going to need to vaccinate something like 190,000 people per day to get to the targets that have been set for October this year. Is that going to be feasible?
Well... Low to middle income countries do mass vaccination programs, not all the time, but they do it frequently. In fact, some would say that they're better equipped than many advanced countries, richer countries to do this. And when they've had a rabies outbreak, they get through extraordinary numbers very quickly. And so you can get large venues with nurses, physicians. factory-like processes, logistics simplified down so that it's all there, and people head for mass vaccination areas, you can actually get through very large numbers very quickly if you need to. So those numbers are not impossible, but they are hard to achieve.
Will Australians be notified personally when it’s their turn to receive the vaccine?
And it's going to take a ramp up. So we're going to start off slow and then ramp up from there. I think the rate-limiting step is actually going to be the supply of vaccines.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What milestone did Australia reach with the arrival of the Pfizer vaccine?
0:00–1:47
2
How will the first phase of the vaccine rollout be organised and who will get it first?
1:47–3:36
3
Will Australians be notified personally when it’s their turn to receive the vaccine?
3:36–4:56
4
What are the biggest logistical challenges to vaccinating 190,000 people per day?
4:56–6:41
5
How common are anaphylactic reactions to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines?
6:41–8:33
6
How is the Oxford‑AstraZeneca vaccine being produced locally in Australia?
8:33–10:15
7
Is Melbourne’s five‑day lockdown likely to end soon and what’s the current case trend?
10:15–10:46