Australian vaccination rollout risks falling behind rest of world

Canberra: The Australian Government should apply a “laser-like focus” on increasing the pace of Australia’s COVID-19 vaccination rollout as it risks falling behind other nations, a public health expert warned.

There is concern after the number of vaccinations struggled to reach a quarter of the Federal Government’s target of 4 million jabs by the end of this month. Adjunct Professor Bill Bowtell, from the University of NSW, told Today other countries are pulling ahead of Australia.

“Yesterday in the United States in one day 3.4 million doses were administered. That’s getting on for about the entire adult population of Australia every week,” he said. And even developing countries that lack the health services Australia has are making progress, Professor Bowtell said.

Public health expert Mr Bowtell said Australia is in a race against time to vaccinate its population against coronavirus. Developing countries like Bangladesh, Rwanda, Senegal all of whom have much worse societal problems than we do are ahead of us.”

Proessor Bowtell said it was essential for the Federal Government to take a cold hard look at the vaccination rollout. “We have to ask some very serious questions about why we are falling behind, we have got to correct those problems with a laser-like focus from the prime minister and the government.”

Professor Bowtell said GPs and other frontline health workers were well positioned to administer vaccinations but suffered a lack of regular supplies.