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

I want to thank the member for Lindsay. Her electorate, in particular the Penrith LGA, is at 94 per cent first doses. It has helped lead the nation and it has played a very important part in Australia achieving now an 85.8 per cent rate for first doses and a 70.8 per cent rate for second doses. This happens at a time when we've seen that the pandemic continues worldwide. Over 450,000 cases were diagnosed in the last 24 hours, and 8,800 souls were lost. There were 8,800 lives lost worldwide. So the scale and the scope of the pandemic continues in a way which is wreaking havoc on lives and communities around the world. Sometimes that is lost in terms of what is occurring on a continuing basis.

Against that background, what we've seen with Australia's vaccination program is another 277,000 vaccinations in the last 24 hours. Over 33 million doses—now almost 33.5 million doses—have been administered. This has led to the achievements that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have talked about, with Victoria now passing 70 per cent double vaccination rate and about to achieve, in the next 24 hours, a 90 per cent first dose vaccination rate, joining New South Wales and the ACT. The ACT is now at over 98 per cent in terms of its first vaccination rate. But, perhaps most critically, our over-70s—the most vulnerable group—have a 98 per cent vaccination rate. In order to strengthen that, we have a booster program with 151 million vaccinations. The TGA will next week consider the final advice with regard to the Pfizer vaccine—the first of those vaccines to submit a booster application. If that is approved, we are ready to go immediately. We have, this year, 40 million Pfizer vaccination doses; next year, 60 million Pfizer vaccination doses; the following year, 25 million Pfizer vaccination doses, an additional 15 million Moderna and an additional 51 million Novavax. So we are in a position to continue that process immediately if there is medical advice to do that.

What all of this has done is save lives and protect lives. It has saved over 30,000 lives in Australia compared with the OECD average and saved over 45,000 lives compared with the terrible tragedies we've seen in the UK and the US, and for that I want to say thank you to every Australian for coming forward to be vaccinated and to urge others to— (Time expired)

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