Morrison lauds ’game changer’ local vaccine production

SCOTT Morrison has declared Australia’s slow COVID-19 vaccine rollout back on track with the nation’s onshore production set to ramp up.

The Prime Minister on Friday toured Melbourne’s CSL plant, which the government claims will produce a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine a week.

The government aimed to have four million Australians vaccinated by early April, but has so far fallen well short of meeting the target.

Mr Morrison said Australia would get to just 500,000 vaccinations by the beginning of next week, but claimed the imminent arrival of onshore production would be a “game changer” for the rollout.

“This just keeps building every week, every single week, and now the supply is on out of our Australian-made vaccine here,” he said. “This has been the big game-changer that we’ve been working so long and so hard to secure for our country.”

Australia’s rollout has been marred by the European Union blocking attempts to ship doses of the Pfizer vaccine overseas.

But the Therapeutic Goods Administration on Sunday approved onshore-produced doses for use, beginning with more than 800,000 doses.

Mr Morrison said Australia was leading a “small club” of countries capable of producing its own supply and declared onshore production ramping up as an “extraordinary moment in Australia’s history”.

“If we didn’t achieve this, there would not be a vaccination program in Australia. That’s how serious this task has been. It has been a gargantuan task,” he said.

The comments came after the Australian Electoral Commission was urged to investigate flyers signed by billionaire Clive Palmer and distributed across the country, which falsely claimed Australia’s vaccines were subject to “emergency use” and questioned safety checks.

Mr Morrison blasted the flyers as “misinformation, pure and simple” and said there was no place for politics when it came to the vaccine rollout.