Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Barker for his question but also, in particular, for his advocacy for mental health support for his constituents, particularly in the border regions during some of the most difficult lockdowns during COVID.

I'm pleased to be able to inform the House that shortly before question time the national incident centre provided the advice that there have been zero cases of community transmission in Australia today. That will be important for all Australians, but particularly for those from Western Australia at this moment. It's real progress: zero lives lost in the last 24 hours and zero cases on ventilation or in ICU around the country. The number of those in hospital from COVID-19 is down to nine Australians. All of this is immensely important information. It comes at a time when the world has rocketed above 103 million cases, sadly, and is approaching 2¼ million lives lost. Those lives lost have increased dramatically since last we met as a parliament.

Whilst we have done extraordinarily well as a nation, we will never be fully safe until the world deals with the pandemic. Vaccination abroad is fundamental and vaccination at home is fundamental. We are in the fortunate position of having secured one of the highest rates of doses per person in the world, 140 million units of vaccine—10 million Pfizer for the mRNA vaccine, 53.8 million AstraZeneca for the viral vector vaccine, 51 million of the Novavax vaccine and 25½ million units through the Covax Facility—whilst also supporting our neighbours in the region.

Critically, we've already seen approval—one of the earliest full approvals in the world—by the TGA, after going through all of the processes, not an emergency process, for the Pfizer vaccine. That means we are on track, on current advice, repeated this morning by our officials who have been working with the EU, for commencement of Pfizer vaccinations beginning in late February. That's always subject to shipping and to international events, but that advice has been repeated this morning. I'm providing that guidance to the parliament and to Australia.

Furthermore, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is due to commence its international rollout in early March, subject to TGA approval, and the CSL-AstraZeneca vaccine—part of 50 million units made here in Australia, beginning here in Australia—in late March. These vaccines are about saving lives, protecting lives and improving lives.

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