As of this Friday, Australia had administered a total of 4,031,539 vaccine doses. Over the past 7 days, an average of 79,800 doses were administered daily (up from an average of 70,300 doses daily the previous week). At the current rate, it will take more than 18 months to reach herd immunity.
Here’s the latest Australian vaccine news from this week:
1. Melbourne recorded 4 new confirmed cases today, while testing numbers exceeded 47,000 — a new high since the pandemic began.
2. Over the past 24 hours, Australia’s daily vaccination numbers hit a record 124,000 doses, pushing the national total past 4 million doses. The Vaccine Operations Centre said it took Australia 47 days to reach the first million doses, while the most recent million took just 13 days.
3. Melbourne will enter a 7-day lockdown starting this Friday, and Victorians aged 40 to 49 will become eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, to be delivered mainly through state-run vaccination hubs. Victoria’s state-run sites will expand from 40 to 49, and the Acting Premier has urged every eligible resident to get vaccinated. Victoria is also currently operating 196 testing centres, 40 of which have extended opening hours.
4. The Health Minister provided further updates on Pfizer supply this week: Australia is expected to have around 4.5 million Pfizer doses by the end of June, rising to 7 million in Q3 and Q4 2021, with a further 20 million doses to be delivered in the final quarter. Supply will then hold steady at that level — meaning roughly 2 million doses per week across the 13 weeks of Q4 2021.
5. The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says the Federal Government has committed to supplying 2 million Pfizer doses per week from October. The AMA President said this committed Pfizer supply means anyone who wants a vaccine could complete both doses before Christmas. (Note: according to earlier clinical trial research on inactivated Covid-19 vaccines, a single dose of an inactivated vaccine does not produce the expected level of immunity — a strong immune response typically develops around 2 weeks after the second dose.) Experts modelling the pandemic’s trajectory for Victoria and the Commonwealth have warned that current vaccine hesitancy will leave Australia short of the vaccination rate needed to safely reopen its borders.
6. The Prime Minister said this week that he will put a draft travel exemption plan to National Cabinet as part of the next phase of Australia’s reopening strategy, hoping to allow people who have been vaccinated to travel interstate even during lockdowns — meaning they could travel to or from restricted or affected states without needing to apply for a state entry permit. However, the draft has met resistance from several states, with NSW, Victoria and Queensland all raising objections.
Sources: ABC, The Age, The Australian, The Guardian, WHO, and official websites of Australian state health departments
