MADELEINE MORRIS:
Shipments from the 800,000-plus locally produced AstraZeneca vaccine have started to make their way around the country following the tick of approval from the TGA.
LISA MILLAR:
So, how will this now affect the rollout? How soon will the next phase begin? And who's next in line? Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd joins us from Canberra. Good morning, Michael. Thanks for coming in on News Breakfast.
MICHAEL KIDD:
Good morning. Good to be here.
LISA MILLAR:
So, what does it mean- yeah. What does it mean that we're under way with seeing these vaccines being shipped out from Melbourne?
MICHAEL KIDD:
So, really good news yesterday with the batch approval, with those first four batches, each of over 200,000 doses of the vaccine being produced by CSL here in Australia. And what this means is that we are now no longer dependent on shipments of vaccine coming into Australia from overseas. We're producing our own vaccine in our own country, which is very rare amongst the countries of the world. And as you've said, these vaccines are now starting to be distributed and people will start receiving these locally made doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine over the coming week.
LISA MILLAR:
How are we going, numbers-wise, with our vaccination process?
MICHAEL KIDD:
So, this week we've distributed over a quarter of a million vaccines to over a thousand general practices, to a number of our Commonwealth-funded general practice-led respiratory clinics and to a number of Aboriginal health services right around the country.
Over the next three to four weeks, we'll have another 3500 general practices which will start administering the vaccine to the people in their local communities, as well as more of our Aboriginal health services around the country. We will be ramping up very quickly over the next couple of weeks to distribute over 400,000 vaccines a week, and that will increase further as more of the batches come through from CSL.
LISA MILLAR:
Now, some of the GPs are wanting to set up community hubs. The ABC has been talking to them. And that can't happen, I understand, because the delivery of the vaccines is very practice-specific, it goes to that particular practice, so you can't gather together and have a community hub and get it all done a bit quicker. Do you think there is still room to look at how the vaccines are being rolled out?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Yes. So, at the moment, the vaccines are rolling out through accredited general practices. And these meet the standards for infection control and for the cold chain storage of vaccines, the standards set by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
We do have a number of sites where we will have a much higher throughput of people receiving the vaccines, and these are through the more than a hundred general practice-led respiratory clinics, which were set up last year to do COVID-19 testing but now are also going to be rolling out the vaccine.
And, of course, we have a number of hubs which have been established by the states and territories, initially to vaccinate large numbers of healthcare workers and quarantine workers, but those hubs may also be able to pivot to deliver the vaccine to members of the public who are within the phase 1B group at the moment.
LISA MILLAR:
Just on the AstraZeneca, the- still concerns over delays coming out from Europe. I know we're now producing our own. But do you have- I mean, what does it mean that there's still this sort of hold-up with vaccines that we should have been getting?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Yes. So, fortunately, with CSL production now happening on shore, we are no longer dependent on overseas supplies. We still have contracts for additional doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from overseas. But, as you've said, we now have surety of supply with the CSL production.
LISA MILLAR:
So, those contracts though are- like, for millions of doses. So, are we just saying, well, that's it, we won't take them? We can't get them?
MICHAEL KIDD:
No, we're still- no, we're still expecting to receive the contracted doses, both from- of the Pfizer vaccine and, of course, we're still dependent on overseas supply and shipments for the 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which is due to come into Australia during this calendar year and the additional millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
LISA MILLAR:
Alright. Michael Kidd, thanks again for your time.
MICHAEL KIDD:
Thank you.
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