Australia secures 10 million more doses of Pfizer vaccine

“They advised from the outset that we should build an option, subject to the determination by the TGA, into our contract to purchase additional doses if the TGA were to approve the use of [the Pfizer vaccine], because it’s an mRNA vaccine.

“We did that quietly behind the scenes. Once the TGA approved the Pfizer vaccine, we triggered that option.”

The Prime Minister and Health Minister both reaffirmed the vaccine rollout was on track to start at the end of February.

“Shortly before joining you, I spoke with both AstraZeneca Australia and Pfizer Australia, and both have reconfirmed that, at this point in time, the vaccine rollout remains on track,” the Health Minister said.

He said subject to shipping - and TGA approval in the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine - the companies’ guidance to the government on Thursday morning confirmed they were on track to start vaccinating in the last week of February with the Pfizer vaccine and the first week of March with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Health department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy said the new purchase agreement doesn’t change the vaccine rollout strategy.

“This additional purchase gives us additional insurance and additional options,” he said.

Professor Murphy said Australia was in a strong place with COVID-19 vaccines.

“We are now in the wonderful position of having three vaccines rolling out this year - two
of them early, the Pfizer and AstraZeneca - depending on the TGA registration, of course, of AstraZeneca - and then Novavax later on,” he said.

“All of these three vaccines have now been shown to be highly effective at preventing clinical COVID disease, and particularly severe COVID disease.

Mr Hunt said that is “a position that we wouldn’t have dreamt of a year ago, six months ago”.

Australia’s position with one case of community transmission today and no lives lost was in stark contrast with the rest of the world.

“We know that the pandemic continues to rage around the world and against that background, the vaccine rollout is the next critical step in protecting Australians.”

Australia initially had an agreement to purchase 10 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which has since proved to have an efficacy rate of about 95 per cent.

As well as the 20 million Pfizer doses, Australia will get 53.8 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine. 50 million of those will be manufactured by CSL in Melbourne. Australia is also purchasing 51 million doses of the Novavax vaccine. Both those vaccines were secured in earlier purchase agreements.

Mr Hunt said Pfizer committed to providing 80,000 doses a week in the first few weeks, but beyond that numbers have not yet been confirmed.

“They’re still looking to provide advice in the middle of the month globally,” he said.

There has been a “significant improvement” in Europe with the flow of both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, Mr Hunt said.

“We’ll receive guidance on the time frames from the company over the coming weeks and months. But the guarantee is that all of those doses will be here during the course of 2021.”