Bitcoin lost in jab scams

AUSTRALIANS have been trying to use bitcoin to “magically” buy COVID vaccines on the dark web — but most have been duped.

Therapeutic Goods Administration head John Skerritt on Tuesday confirmed the Health Department was working with Border Force to monitor attempts to illegally import jabs.

Professor Skerritt said a “handful” of Aussies had been caught in online scams.

“There’s been a small amount of activity on the dark web,” Prof Skerritt said.

“This is more individuals who feel if they pay a certain number of bitcoins they can magically have two doses of Pfizer turn up.

“It turns out that many of those cases, people simply gave their money, but nothing has turned up.”

Appearing before a Senate committee, Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy said the government had updated modelling on when Australians might be vaccinated but could not share it.

Australia had aimed to see four million people vaccinated by the end of March, but by Tuesday night just 1.7 million had received a jab.

Professor Murphy said it was up to national cabinet when the updated timelines were made public, after initial goals were abandoned due to supply issues with the Pfizer vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine being linked to a rare blood clot disorder.

“The international supply of Pfizer, which is an even more important vaccine to our rollout now, is subject to ongoing reassessment with Pfizer,” he said. “It’s going to be hard without a clear reliance on domestic supply to be absolutely certain about targets, but we will share targets when we have them.”

Australia was expecting 20 million more Pfizer doses towards the end of the year.

The Senate was also told only 6.5 per cent of the approximately 25,000 people living with disabilities in care facilities had received their vaccine, despite being in phase 1A of the rollout. Just 192 had been given their second dose.

It comes after the University of Queensland released clinical trial data from trials that found the abandoned candidate could have been one of the best in the world.

The findings of the phase one safety study found there was an immune response generated in 99 per cent of patients on whom it was tested.

The trial was abandoned four months ago but the new data found 67 of the 68 people who received two doses of the molecular clamp drug showed a promising “neutralising immune response”.

More than 50 million doses of the homegrown drug were ordered before trials were dumped in December after the technology was found to be producing false-positive readings to the AIDS virus.