LISA MILLAR:
Turning to Australia's fight against COVID, and there have been some major developments in the last 24 hours, with Pfizer booster shots given provisional approval and rapid antigen tests hitting major supermarkets from next week. For more, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Michael Kidd, joins us from Canberra. Good morning, Michael. Welcome to News Breakfast.
MICHAEL KIDD:
Thank you. Good morning, Lisa.
LISA MILLAR:
Should we be looking at booster shots when we have a lot of people who have not yet had- been fully vaccinated with first or second doses?
MICHAEL KIDD:
So firstly, it's really important that we continue the rollout of those first and second doses to people right across Australia, particularly in those parts of Australia where we have lower rates of vaccination coverage at this time.
The booster doses - and we're still waiting for formal advice from ATAGI, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, on who the booster doses will be offered to, - but the booster doses are licensed for use six months after people have received their second dose of their COVID-19 vaccine.
Now, there's only small numbers of people, of course, who've reached that six-month point at this time. It was particularly those people we focused the vaccine rollout on at the, the start of the program - people living in residential aged care and disability care, health care workers, people working on the borders and in quarantine. So it's likely they'll will be the first people who the booster doses will be available to.
We do have, though, very strong capacity in our vaccine rollout. We now have nearly 10,000 sites across Australia where Australians can go and receive a COVID-19 vaccine, including most general practices, many pharmacies, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health centres, the Commonwealth vaccination centres and the hubs established by the states and territories. And of course, we now have adequate supply to be able to, not only continue the rollout of the first two vaccines, but also to start introducing the boosters.
LISA MILLAR:
On vaccines for kids under 12, when might that happen?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Yeah. So, preliminary advice has been received from Pfizer by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and there's further information which is needed from the company by the TGA in order to make an assessment about whether to recommend vaccination of those aged between five and 11. So that information will be coming over the days and weeks ahead.
LISA MILLAR:
What's your, what's your best guess on it? Are we going to have kids under 12 vaccinated by Christmas? Or having that opportunity?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Yes. Look, it really depends on the, on the company and then it depends on the decisions made by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and then, of course, the assessment by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. So, I'm sorry, I can't put an exact time frame on it.
LISA MILLAR:
How much should we rely on these rapid antigen tests?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Yes. So as you mentioned, the rapid antigen tests will be available for people to purchase from next week. We're still learning, along with the rest of the world, about the appropriate uses of these rapid antigen tests. We've certainly seen that they can be very useful in a number of industry settings in order to assess people as they arrive for work to see whether they may or may not be infected with COVID-19. This is particularly important as we see ongoing community transmission of COVID-19 in parts of Australia.
So, we've seen, for example, that they've been helpful in residential aged care facilities. When people turn up for work, you can get a quick result. If people have a positive result, they need a PCR test in order to determine if that's a true positive. And of course what you've done there though is, is you've stopped someone who's potentially infected from coming into that particular workplace.
Other parts of the world are using them. We've seen them used in the UK, in children attending school, being done at home. And so, I think we're going to learn, over the weeks and months ahead, about where it's appropriate to use one of these rapid antigen tests, and where we still need to be using the regular PCR tests, which we've all grown so used to. Just really important, though, to note that rapid antigen tests are not as accurate as the PCR tests, so there'll still be important use of the PCR tests going forward.
LISA MILLAR:
Use with caution. Michael Kidd, thanks for your time.
MICHAEL KIDD:
Thanks so much.
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