CARRIE BICKMORE:
Well, Lieutenant General John Frewen is head of the National COVID Taskforce and he joins us now. General, is vaccination the only way out of lockdown for Sydney at this stage?
JOHN FREWEN:
No, vaccination is only one of the important ways that we can help reduce the lockdown. You know, we've got to enforce lockdown; we've got to do the testing, the tracing, the isolation. But of course, underpinning our national way out of this is vaccination.
CARRIE BICKMORE:
And have any decisions been made about whether it's better to have people fully vaccinated or get everyone with at least one shot of Pfizer?
JOHN FREWEN:
Yeah. So look, it's really important that everybody gets at the least one dose of vaccine, that gives you some protection. I think in Sydney right now, there's a decision being made by the New South Wales authorities around trying to prioritise first dose of Pfizers, so they're extending the dose duration there. So any vaccination is better than no vaccination, but being fully vaccinated is the best protection.
CARRIE BICKMORE:
And what about the option of Moderna coming on towards the end of the year?
JOHN FREWEN:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's another mRNA vaccine and that will come, at this stage, we're hoping late September, early October, but that- we've got 10 million doses of that have coming as well. So, there is more than enough vaccines by the end of the year to give every Australian who wants to be vaccinated to get vaccinated.
WALEED ALY:
I'm going to need your help to clear something up, Lieutenant General, because I'm very confused about the vaccination allocation in New South Wales. The Prime Minister, in a press conference yesterday, said: there'll be 90,000 more Pfizer doses going to New South Wales from next week. We've also now heard an additional 50,000 Pfizer doses are being sent to New South Wales. We know that the other states are not sending their dose. Where are the extra doses coming from?
JOHN FREWEN:
Yeah. Waleed look, we're constantly working with Pfizer to, to bring forward any doses that we can. The- Last month, you know, we were able to bring forward a large number of doses from late September into this year, so these doses are part of that bring-forward.
WALEED ALY:
So does that mean that when the Prime Minister talks about New South Wales getting extra doses, that these are extra doses that are going to every state?
JOHN FREWEN:
No. We're, we're bringing forward doses in support of New South Wales and their current circumstances. You'd know a couple of weeks ago we, we brought forward 150,000 Pfizer and 150,000 AstraZeneca. There's another 50,000 that we're, we're bringing forward at the moment.
WALEED ALY:
Okay. So one of the things that confuses me is that on Friday you said that the Commonwealth did not have Pfizer doses to reallocate. The current supplies had already been sent out to the states. It seems to have changed within a matter of a couple of days. Is that right?
JOHN FREWEN:
Yeah. Look, this is a week-by-week proposition, Waleed, and as the doses become available, we bring them forward as quickly as we can.
WALEED ALY:
So what changed between Friday and yesterday?
JOHN FREWEN:
Working with Pfizer, figuring out exactly what's coming in week by week.
WALEED ALY:
So on Friday when you said we didn't have doses to reallocate, did you know that we would by Sunday?
JOHN FREWEN:
I became aware late Friday afternoon of some additional Pfizer that was available, yes.
WALEED ALY:
Okay. And then today we hear from the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Michael Kidd, that 50,000 doses are being sent to New South Wales from an unallocated stockpile. Do we have some kind of emergency stockpile that doesn't get allocated?
JOHN FREWEN:
No, we don't, Waleed. We figure out what's coming in and we allocate all of that out. We're also managing orders. I mean, sometimes orders aren't fully taken up, sometimes there are cancellations of orders. So if we've ever got stock in the margins or stock that isn't being utilised, then we'll seek to reallocate that as well.
WALEED ALY:
Right, okay. So how big is that stockpile? Like now that we've allocated from this unallocated stockpile, is that done? Do we have no more? If New South Wales- or if there was an outbreak in another state tomorrow, and they decided that they needed more and they asked for more, would there be anything to give them?
JOHN FREWEN:
There is, there was about 87,000 doses that became available late Friday afternoon 50,000 of those are - going to Sydney, and we're looking at where the other doses will go right now.
WALEED ALY:
So, I appreciate you are walking me through this, because I will admit to being really confused as I tried to get my head around it. Unfortunately, most Australians don't have the opportunity I do of just asking you questions until I feel I've got my head around it.
JOHN FREWEN:
Yeah.
WALEED ALY:
Do we have a major problem with the clarity or transparency of what is going on with our acquisition of vaccines? And then the distribution of it around the country?
JOHN FREWEN:
Waleed, you probably know when I came into this job I committed to transparency and I've been progressively releasing as much data as I can. The very first thing that I released were the supply forecasts out to the end of the year. But we then get advised by Pfizer what is coming on a monthly basis, and then that comes week by week, and we break it down from there.
STEVE PRICE:
General Frewen, we understand the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, was keen to have the ADF involved in some form in south west Sydney. What exact role would you have play if you had gone in there?
JOHN FREWEN:
Yeah. Look, the PM's made the offer to New South Wales. I, prior to this job, I was actually responsible for the Defence's responses to COVID. So, there's been a whole range of things the ADF has done across the country in support of COVID - there's been support to police there's been contact tracing, there's been assistance with quarantine- there's a whole range of things. In Victoria, we actually had ADF people doing testing at one stage - they did more than 250,000 tests down in Sydney. So they can, they can help out with a range of things, and they can help relieve some of the pressure on other workforces, but that's really up to the New South Wales Government.
CARRIE BICKMORE:
General, we'll let you go, but we appreciate your time tonight, thank you.
JOHN FREWEN:
Thanks very much.
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