SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use on Monday, but warned AstraZeneca’s international manufacturing problems that the country should distribute a locally manufactured shot ahead of schedule.
The country’s medical regulator was one of the first in the world to complete comprehensive approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Monday, noting it had been a year since the first local coronavirus case was discovered. .
Priority group vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine is expected to begin at 80,000 doses per week by the end of February, Health Secretary Greg Hunt told reporters.
Pfizer had told the Australian government it expected continuous supplies, but would issue weekly global production guidelines “for March and then mid-February,” he said.
The update to the Australian rollout comes after AstraZeneca Plc told European Union officials on Friday that it would cut deliveries of its vaccine to the bloc by 60% in the first quarter due to manufacturing issues.
Hunt said AstraZeneca had informed Australia that the company had “had a significant supply shock and that means we won’t have as much of that AstraZeneca international in March as they previously promised”.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has yet to be approved by Australia, which expects to begin domestic delivery of the AstraZeneca vaccine by CSL in March ahead of schedule, at 1 million doses per week, he said.
“The decision to pay a premium for onshore, safe, sovereign vaccine manufacturing capacity through CSL puts Australia in a much safer position than almost any other country in the world,” said Hunt.
Australia has set a target of having 4 million doses of vaccine by April. It has also committed to deliver vaccines to Pacific countries at a later timetable.
The Pfizer vaccine has been tentatively approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for Australians 16 and older.
Australia will administer the two doses of the vaccine to each recipient at the recommended time.
Quarantine and border workers, primary health workers and elderly care and disabled workers and residents will be the first group to receive vaccines.
There have been no new cases of community transmission in Australia in the past seven days, and no Australians with coronavirus in hospital intensive care units. Hunt contrasted this with six million cases worldwide in the past 10 days and 125,000 lives lost.
“That comparison is almost unbelievable, the difference between where we are in Australia and beyond,” he said.
To make sure it stayed that way, Australia suddenly suspended its travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours on Monday and ordered anyone arriving since January 14 to isolate and get tested, after New Zealand’s first case of COVID -19 in the community in months.
“This will be done out of an abundance of caution as more is learned about the event and the case,” Hunt told reporters later in the day.
Australia has had just under 28,800 cases in the past year, the vast majority in the state of Victoria, and 909 deaths.
Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Byron Kaye; Additional reporting by Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Editing by Diane Craft and Sam Holmes