On
22 February 2021 what should have been the biggest logistical
exercise in Australia’s history got underway – the vaccination of
the
population
against the
COVID-19 global
pandemic
caused by the
SARS-CoV-2
virus.
“This
vaccination program launches us down our path out of the COVID-19
pandemic in 2021. Every Australian will be given the opportunity to
receive a COVID-19 vaccine, free of charge that has been proven to be
safe and effective by our own medical experts.” [Australian
Prime Minister Scott Morrison,
media
release,
21 February 2021]
Eleven
months earlier in an effort to contain the spread of viral infection
within Australia, the
Morrison Government had finally
closed
Australia’s borders at
9pm AEDT on Friday, 20 March 2020, with exemptions only for Australian
citizens, permanent residents (including NZ permanent residents) and
their immediate families, including spouses, legal guardians and
dependants, as well as Pacific Islanders transiting to their own
countries.
From
the very start of the
pandemic
the Morrison Government had refused to take responsibility for
creating/re-establishing
a
national human quarantine
system with dedicated purposed-built quarantine facilities.
Instead
an ad hoc system of leased hotels in capital
cities was established, primarily operating
as
quarantine sites under the control of
state governments, in order to fill
the
unmet need to isolate those who at the time were still coming to Australia as tourists, as well as Australians returning from overseas or those transiting through Australia.
This
ad hoc system allowed COVID-19 to spread into the community on multiple occasions and state
border closures became a feature of domestic pandemic response
measures.
Commencing
on 3 March 2020
there had
been repeated announcements from
the Prime Minister concerning the development of a COVID-19 vaccine
and his
government’s successful
efforts
up
to November 2020 to
secure
over
134
million vaccine doses for
the national vaccination program.
In
Morrison’s own words “our strategy puts
Australia at the front of the queue”
for
vaccine supply.
By
February
2021 most Australians were anticipating the pledge that the adult
population
would be fully
vaccinated by the end of October 2021.
Then
we discovered how
comprehensively
we had been mislead.
There
had
never
been a
well-defined strategy
behind efforts to obtain enough vaccine doses to provide the
Australian population with protection against COVID-19 infection –
just what
looked suspiciously like a
game of mates.
With
the AstraZeneca COVID-19
vaccine
becoming flavour of the pandemic with Morrison (there was already a
Liberal Party connection with that big pharma corporation and
with
CSL) and an
early offer by Pfizer to supply Australia with its COVID-19 vaccine
rejected.
Then
as international circumstances changed and demand for vaccines began to exceed big pharma stockpiles, it became
much more difficult for Australia to successfully compete with other
nations for
vaccine doses.
As
for the national COVID-19 vaccination program rollout, Morrison's plan avoided using the mass vaccination expertise of state and
territory departments of health and put together a pottage of primarily private sector vaccine delivery methods which failed to meet the vaccination target
of 4 million people receiving their first vaccine dose in the first
four weeks of the rollout.
When one looks at the identified priority groups it is clear that by 8 May 2021 only around 260,000 vaccine doses have been administered across the aged care and disability sectors and many frontline health workers were yet to receive their first vaccine dose.
The
wheels really fell off the bus when the AstraZeneca vaccine was
shown to produce a life threatening adverse reaction in some people
days or weeks after receiving a vaccine dose - thrombosis
with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).
After
one woman died from TTS Morrison declared that the AstraZeneca
vaccine would no longer be given to individuals under 50 years of age
and, with not enough Pfizer vaccine on hand to vaccinate the under
50s Morrison
declared there was no longer a fixed time table for the national
vaccination program rollout and no new
target
would be set for when the Australian population would be fully vaccinated.
Since that early April 2021 decision to keep vaccinating those 50 years of age and older with the problematic AstraZeneca vaccine, 5 people aged between 51 and 74 years of age have been hospitalised with TTS. Bringing to 11 the number of people diagnosed with TTS after receiving an AstraZeneca vaccine dose - that is 11 TTS adverse events in approximately 1.4 million doses administered - with 5 of those 11 people being 64 years of age and older.
So
this is now Australia's reality……
The Guardian graph showing Australia's vaccine supply as of March-April 2021:
The Guardian graph showing changing 'aspirational' targets and the 2.7 million doses gap between expected doses administered and actual doses administered by 10 May 2021:
The end result of what appears to be Prime Minister Scott Morrison's personal pandemic strategy - to offload as many federal responsibilities onto the states and territories in the hope of avoiding political blame if things go awry - is that Australia still has (i) no safe and secure national human quarantine system in place; (ii) an inadequate vaccine supply currently on hand; and, (iii) only est. 12 per cent of its eligible population having received at least a first vaccine dose; at a time when the global pandemic is escalating in the south-east Asia region and highly infectious COVID-19 variants are spreading globally.
Morrison has created the risk that a wave of COVID-19 community transmitted infections, possibly exacerbated by a virus variant, could take off between now and the end of first quarter of 2022.
In a classic political ploy on Tuesday 11 May he began sending his MPs forth to leak his 'private' concerns that the global pandemic was more threatening now than it was a year ago, that COVID-19 remained a danger to Australia as it is "racing" through countries such as India, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea like nothing we had seen in our lifetimes. He warned his MPs against complacency.
Those allegedly private concerns and, an election campaign inspired Budget 2021-22 (that continues to leave establishing Commonwealth human quarantine stations out of federal budgets) which he revealed later on the same day, are apparently supposed to divert the attention of voters. So that we all fail to notice that it is because of his own mismanagement of the federal government's role in the national response to the global pandemic that Australia's national border will need to remain closed until well into the 2022 calendar year.
Prepare for his office to release more publicity photos of prime ministerial visits to defence force bases, walks down red carpets, chin-jutting poses surrounded by flags or twee pics with wife and children. As well as more keynote speeches to industry & assorted lobby groups, along with upbeat announcements of a better future. All scattered as media releases in order to distract both mainstream journalists and the national electorate from pondering that looming public health risk he created.
BACKGROUND
The
Guardian,
22
April 2021:
Australia
has received just 70% of the vaccine doses the government expected to
have on hand by mid-April, according to a Guardian Australia
analysis.
In
a presentation published
online on 14 March, the government included monthly forecasts for
Australia’s expected vaccine supply, accounting for the disruptions
to overseas supply that had already occurred leading up to that
point.
Based
on these forecasts, and figures cited by the health minister, Greg
Hunt, for the number of doses received from domestic and
international suppliers, there is a shortfall of about 1.8m vaccine
doses.
The
federal government has
previously blamed international shipment delays for the slow
rollout, which could
take a couple of years to complete at the current pace.
However,
comparing the government’s forecast with the number of doses we
have actually received shows there has also been a shortfall in
domestic production, with the number of locally-produced AstraZeneca
vaccine doses lower than the government expected.
CSL,
the company producing the AstraZeneca vaccine locally, put out a
press release in February suggesting
it would be able to produce 2m doses by the end of March.
On
24 March, CSL confirmed the release of 830,000 doses, and on 7 April,
Hunt revealed CSL had produced at least 1.3 million doses by that
point.
When
asked why the 2m doses target had been missed, Hunt went into detail
about the production and approval process, but did not directly
answer the question.
Hunt
did, however, indicate that CSL would be scaling up production, and
called the production of 1.3m doses so far an “extraordinary
achievement”.
It
is not clear whether the March forecasts were too optimistic or if
there are other issues involved.
According
to people familiar with how vaccines are made, the process for
creating such a vaccine involves a series of complex biological
procedures and involves ongoing refinement, sometimes over several
years, to reach peak levels of production.
Guardian
Australia sent detailed questions about the vaccine supply shortfall
to the health department, and a spokesperson said Pfizer shipments
were expected to increase and CSL would produce more than 50m doses
this year.
“Australia
has entered into four separate agreements for the supply of Covid-19
vaccines, if they are proved to be safe and effective,” the
spokesperson said in a statement.
“These
include agreements with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novavax and the Covax
facility. Combined, these agreements will ensure access to
approximately 170 million doses.
“As
shipments of Pfizer and AstraZeneca are made available, they will be
dispatched across Australia to vaccinate the population. Deliveries
from Pfizer are expected regularly and will increase over the coming
months. CSL is producing 50 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses over
the course of this year.”
A
CSL spokesperson was positive about production, saying: “Production
of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is progressing well at both CSL
Behring and Seqirus, and the teams continue work around the clock to
meet our commitment to the Australian community.
“The
process for releasing vaccines involves extensive safety and quality
checks and no batch is released until all parties – CSL, the TGA
and AstraZeneca – are satisfied that each vaccine meets the
required quality standards.
“CSL
is proud of our unique role in manufacturing this vaccine for
Australia.”
The
government has also now made figures on vaccine utilisation by states
and territories available, with the most
recent update on 19 April.
South
Australia had the lowest utilisation rates, having administered just
59% of the vaccine doses available.
Tasmania
and the Australian Capital Territory both had very high rates, at 97%
and 98% respectively.
Guardian
Australia analysis had previously found that the smaller states were
doing better in their rollout on a per-100 population basis.
Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory
each have administered more than four doses per 100 population.
With
more vaccines on the horizon, Dr Mark Hanly from the University of
New South Wales says the groundwork has to be laid now for how to
administer them out.
“[Federal]
and state governments need to be planning now for how they will
administer 1,000,000 doses a week,” he says. “We need to plan the
logistics of how to administer vaccine at a rate that can match
supply once local production is up and running. If suitable
vaccination facilities aren’t in place, it is possible that the
bottleneck will simply shift from supply to administration.”
South
Australia is the latest to announce the creation of mass vaccination
hubs to speed up the rollout, something Hanly was calling for in
February, even before the rollout faltered.
“Mass
vaccination sites and GPs have different advantages, so a rollout
that draws on the benefits of both delivery modes is likely to help
us get to high levels of coverage faster than drawing on either mode
alone,” he says. “All of this, of course, is contingent on supply
and people’s willingness to come forward to be vaccinated.”
