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

I thank the member for Wentworth for his question and also for the support of his constituents and people in Greater Sydney at this moment in time. We know, as the Prime Minister has said, that over a quarter of a million Australians were vaccinated in 24 hours. This is the first time that that mark has been reached, we believe, in this nation's history and certainly during the course of the pandemic. The figure of 255,900 Australians is approximately the population of Geelong—in one day. It's almost the population of Wollongong—in one day. That gives the House a sense of the number of Australians who are stepping forward, who are being vaccinated. And, over the last week, it is 1.4 million Australians, 200,000 a day as the Prime Minister has said, well more than the population of Adelaide—in one week.

What does it mean? It means that the ramp-up is occurring precisely as we set out to do during Q3, during the third quarter. The reason why is that we have gone from 700,000 vaccines a week in mid-June to 1.4 million vaccines—and this week we have distributed two million vaccinations to the nation. It includes the fact that we have had over 1.2 million Pfizer vaccines arrive—more than we have previously said would be the case, because we have been able to work quietly and successfully to bring those vaccines forward. All of these things are coming forward to save lives and protect lives.

The member, of course, has immense international experience. He would be painfully aware that whether it is in Israel, which is seeing very high case numbers; whether it is in the United States, where they have had over 700,000 cases in a week; whether it is in the UK, which saw over 140 lives lost in the last 24 hours; or around the world, with 600,000 cases and 11,000 lives lost in one day, a global pandemic is raging. And we have our challenges at home—profound and real and significant—but that comparison with what we see abroad reminds us that there is a pandemic across the world which is ravaging lives and having an impact on society unlike anything we have seen in peacetime since the Spanish flu.

This vaccine program continues to ramp up. We now have almost 82 per cent of over-70s, we now have almost 70 per cent of over-50s and, together, 14.2 million vaccinations have been delivered to Australians. So there are great challenges, but these vaccines are saving lives and protecting lives. They are working on the fact that we have contained the virus by comparison with what we have seen around the world. We're not immune, but we have a plan which is saving lives and protecting lives. (Time expired)

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