PETER STEFANOVIC:
Joining us live now, is Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Michael Kidd, to talk about the other big story. There's quite a few of them that are taking place today. Michael, good to see you, thanks for joining us. So, how are you feeling ahead of today? Because there's a lot of concern in New South Wales, as to whether - you know, this is actually going to be able to go ahead. But there's also, you know, a moment - it's a moment of history here, where we're moving into the next phase, we're speeding things up at the moment?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Well, you're exactly right. Today is a historic day in Australia's fight against COVID-19, a historic day in this pandemic and I'm very excited about the rollout. The rollout, of course, beginning today in over a thousand general practices right across the country. That will be scaling up, to 4500 general practices over the next three to four weeks. We've also got over 100 of our general practice-led respiratory clinics, which are also going to delivering the vaccine and many of our Aboriginal medical services, right across the country. So, 6 million people will be eligible to receive the first dose of their AstraZeneca vaccine, over the next two to three months.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Live aerials that are coming through of the New South Wales floods, just to show our viewers what's going on. But, Michael, what sort of delays are you expecting today, when it comes to the vaccine rollout?
MICHAEL KIDD:
So, we already know that a number of deliveries have not been able to be made because of roads being closed due to the floods, particularly in New South Wales. And of course, a number of practices have had to close because of the flooding or because staff cannot get to those practices safely. Obviously, safety is paramount in these circumstances. So, if you do have a booking to get your vaccine today, in areas affected by the floods, please don't go if it means putting yourself at risk.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
It's a big step in terms of reaching our targets, Michael. Are you confident that we're still on track to reach those?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Yes, I am. So, we're expecting for this current phase to rollout over the next two to three months and we'll have 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine available for delivery, to people over this week. That will rapidly ramp up over the next three to four weeks, to well over 400,000 doses a week. But the good news yesterday, with the Therapeutic Goods Administration providing its final approval to CSL, means that over the next few weeks, CSL will be rolling out up to a million doses of the vaccine per week. And that means that we're going to be able to progressively scale up the number of vaccines which are able to be delivered by each of the sites right across the country.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
So, just give me an example of that. I had a GP on the show at a clinic in the last hour, and they said they can get a maximum of up to 400 vaccines, 400 doses. So, as an example, would those numbers be increased?
MICHAEL KIDD:
So, they may, it depends on the general practice, it depends on how large their patient population is, it depends on how many other clinics there are in their local area which are able to deliver the vaccine as well. We'll be monitoring each week how many doses each general practice is using and then they'll be able to apply for additional doses over the weeks ahead. So, it will be by practice, by practice. We'll see what happens. This, of course, is what we do with our rollout of vaccinations in Australia, with our national immunisation program, our annual influenza vaccine program. We roll it out through general practices. The general practices know their local populations; they know how many people there are. We'll need to get these vaccines over the weeks ahead.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Of course, it's not going to happen flawlessly, as we would hope that they would. But what hiccups are you expecting along the way?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Well, I don't think anyone was expecting the hiccup today, with the extreme weather events and the flooding that we've seen, which obviously is going to delay the rollout in practises in the area affected by the floods. But, we expect that the rollout will continue quite seamlessly in practices right across the country. People do need to be patient, though. At the moment, if they go to the vaccine eligibility checker on the Australian government website, they may not find their local general practice there. At the moment, there's only a thousand practices which are listed that over the next three to four weeks, another 3500 practices will be added to that checker. And people will be able to hopefully find a practice that's close to them to go and get the vaccine. So, please be patient. There's no rush to get the vaccine. There's going to be plenty of vaccine available for everybody and it'll rollout, as we say, over the next two to three months.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Brendan Murphy had made some interesting comments over the weekend, Michael, suggesting that international travel, it's looking like it's going to be set for next year. Is-are you that confident?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Well, what we know is that we need to protect the people of Australia from severe disease, from COVID-19, and the way to do that is through vaccination. And it's incredibly important that everybody who is eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine gets their vaccinations. This is going to mean that when we do move towards opening up our borders, that, of course, may happen slowly. But, when that does start to happen, when we do start to have community transmission of COVID-19, we are protecting the people of Australia from developing severe disease. So, the vaccination program is an absolutely fundamental part of opening Australia back up over time.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
And then perhaps quarantining at home, which is very, very interesting. Is that something that you are certain can happen at about the same time, perhaps even the start of next year?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Well, we'll have to wait and see what happens, obviously. We can- what we know to expect from this pandemic is twists and turns. There's things that we don't yet fully understand. We don't know what some of these variants of concern are going to mean. We don't know how long the immunity from each individual vaccine is going to last. And of course, we don't know how effective these vaccines are going to be at preventing transmission of COVID-19. So the most important thing at the moment that we're focusing on is getting our adult population vaccinated.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Michael Kidd, appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you soon.
Contact
