Add Category
The Australian COVID-19 vaccine program would be even further behind if the government had depended on Pfizer vaccines for its rollout, the Prime Minister says, as his government faces suggestions it was late to make a deal with the company.
Key points:
- The Prime Minister says a locally made vaccine strategy has doubled the country's current vaccination rate
- He says Pfizer was focusing its vaccine supply on heavily affected countries
- The government expects the country to reach its 70 per cent target next month
Correspondence between international pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the Commonwealth last year has raised questions about whether the government was too slow in signing a deal for vaccines.
Health Minister Greg Hunt's office did not step in until August, a fortnight after the United States and the United Kingdom announced supply deals with Pfizer, according to the emails released under Freedom of Information laws.
But Mr Morrison firmly denied his government was slow to take up an offer of Pfizer vaccines.
"It was very clear from those discussions, the focus was not on Australia — the focus was on where people were dying in the thousands, tens of thousands," Mr Morrison said.
He said it was "clear" Australia would need to manufacture its own vaccines to ensure supply, which led to a vaccine strategy that depended on locally made AstraZeneca shots.
"Our vaccination rates would be half what they were today were it not for our decision to put in place the sovereign manufacturing capability here in Australia for AstraZeneca," he said.
"That was the priority that was recommended to us, of course, by our health advisers and they were the opportunities that we pursued."
"I think there are a lot of heroes of hindsight at the moment out there."
The government changed its focus to Pfizer vaccines after changed health recommendations essentially limited AstraZeneca vaccines to people over 50, and later 60.
Pfizer has said it was in discussion with the Australian government from the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr Morrison said the vaccine program was now something Australians could be "optimistic" about, with 70 per cent of people 16 and older expected to have received two vaccine doses by mid-October.
Just over 39 per cent of people 16 and over are fully vaccinated.
Loading form...