Australia to Begin Coronavirus Vaccinations in February
Australia will begin administering COVID-19 vaccines in February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced. Mr Morrison said on Thursday that Australia’s vaccine rollout would occur in five stages with frontline workers in the health, aged care, disability and hotel quarantine systems as well as those living in aged care or with a disability to be the first Australians inoculated against COVID-19 from mid-February.
“We anticipate optimistically that we would hope to start the vaccination with around 80,000 vaccinations a week,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“The vaccination in 2021 is a key component, obviously, of how we’re dealing with the pandemic here in Australia.” The announcement came only one day after Greg Hunt, the Minister for Health, said that the estimated start of the vaccine programme had been brought forward from late March to early March.
As of Thursday afternoon, there had been 28,547 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia, and the numbers of locally and overseas acquired cases in the last 24 hours were one and 10 respectively, according to the latest figures from the Department of Health.
The department also said that the number of locally acquired cases in the last seven days was 53.
The PM said on Thursday that the government was now aiming to have four million people vaccinated by the end of March.
However, he stressed that vaccines were not a “silver bullet” and that COVID-safe measures would continue throughout the year.