2.5m Aussie vaccines in cold storage
Shortage explained: Locally made jabs held up by ‘batch testing’
More than half of the three million Covid-19 vaccine doses Australia has manufactured remain in cold storage and cannot be rolled out yet because they are undergoing further batch testing in Europe by the drug company AstraZeneca.
News.com.au has confirmed that despite Melbourne firm CSL producing more than three million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in Australia, the majority of the doses have not been approved for distribution.
Instead, only the first 832,200 doses that left CSL-Seqirus’ Parkville factory with great media fanfare on the back of trucks on March 23 are being used to vaccinate Australians.
Another 2.5 million doses remain in cold storage while undergoing final approval and testing. Of these, a couple of hundred thousand were approved for use last Thursday but the majority remain “on ice”.
That suggests CSL has manufactured 3.2 million Covid-19 doses and rising. However, of these doses only around a third — one million — have been approved for use and can actually be used to vaccinate Australians. That means less than half of the vaccines produced have actually been rolled out.
The Morrison Government remains under fire for failing to meet its own targets for the vaccine rollout including the number of vaccines being produced on a weekly basis and the number of Australians actually vaccinated.
Yesterday, four million Americans received a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine as the country continues to rapidly accelerate its rollout.
By comparison, that’s the same number of Australians who were meant to have received a jab by the end of March . . . a target that the Government fell short of by 3.4 million people.
Just 2 per cent of Australians have received a jab so far, compared to 30 per cent of the US population and 46 per cent of people in the UK.
A number of frontline health workers, hotel quarantine workers and vulnerable aged-care residents remain unvaccinated, despite the significant risks.
In a statement, CSL told news.com. au that this batch testing was vital to ensure the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and that it hoped to hit the target of one million doses in the future.
The vaccines do not need to be physically sent back to Europe but the scientific work is being shared electronically and reviewed overseas. They also need to be approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
On March 25, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told ABC radio that CSL was producing “more than 900,000 of them coming out a week”.
CSL confirmed to news.com.au that this figure is not correct and they have never produced more than 900,000 in a single week. They remain hopeful of doing so in the future.
“They are now rolling off the line, filled and finished out of Parkhill down there in Melbourne, you know, over more than 900,000 of them coming out a week,” the Prime Minister said. “And so the decision to have a domestic manufacturing capability here has been the big change, a game changer. We would not have a vaccination programme were it not for the wisdom of that decision that my Government took.”
Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy has hailed Australia’s decision to locally produce the vaccine as among the “single best thing” Australia has done given the threats in Europe to block vaccine exports.
CSL remains contracted to make 50 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with taxpayers paying a premium for the vaccines.
Labor’s government services spokesman Bill Shorten said the problem was not simply one of supply but also at the distribution end with GPs.
“They are not paying overtime. If you want to do mass vaccinations you need to do it on weekends and after hours,” he told news.com.au.
Shorten said he had an open mind as to whether they should scrap the phased rollout based on age and just go for mass vaccination as quickly as possible.
“In California they scrapped it. They should consider it. There’s a reason why the Americans did four million in a weekend and we haven’t,” he said.