Covid-19 game-changer lands in Australia

The first Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines arrived overnight with pictures revealing pallets of doses being unloaded off Qantas flights after a major swap deal with the UK.

Last week Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia will receive four million doses of Pfizer this month in the deal, saying he owed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson “a beer” for the deal between “mates”.

Approximately 450,000 vaccines were delivered to Sydney from London by two flights, with the doses to be tested by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) before they are released and distributed. The first flight carried 164,970 doses while a second carried 295,500.

The deliveries, along with an extra 500,000 Pfizer vaccines from Singapore that arrived last week and have already been cleared by the TGA, means Australia will have an extra 4.5 million vaccines.

The rest of the additional doses will arrive in the coming weeks.

Australia has agreed to return four million doses from the national stockpile to the UK for it to use in its booster programme.

“I want to thank [Johnson] for his personal commitment to this and his great friendship with Australia,” Morrison said. “There’s been some very late-night discussions and negotiations and legal work taking place, especially over the course of the past week, to bring this to conclusion, but it has been a real commitment to Australia from Prime Minister Johnson.”