Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Could the minister please update the House on progress in securing and delivering safe and effective vaccines to all Australians?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Higgins for her continued interest in the vaccine program, because it does matter for all Australians. This morning I had the privilege of visiting the Therapeutic Goods Administration and, along with the head of the TGA, Professor John Skerritt, I was able to inform Australians that two of the four vaccines which Australia has secured have already been placed on the provisional approval pathway.

What does this mean? It means they're being given an expedited process to approval but subject to the most rigorous safety assessments, I believe, in the world. The reason this is important is that whilst Australia, on the latest advice I have from the national incidence centre, has contained its community transmission to six cases in seven days—less than one case a day—the world is seeing over 500,000 cases a day, on average, and sadly we've seen 9,000 lives lost in the past 24 hours. So, globally the challenge is enormous. Whilst our containment practices are working, we know that we cannot be safe until we have a vaccine that will protect Australians not just from the disease in Australia but also from the disease at the global level.

This week we have seen the commencement of manufacturing of a vaccine in Australia by CSL. We've seen the very important news that one of the vaccines that we've secured, the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, is making extremely positive progress. We're still cautious, but the progress is very heartening. Today we've been able to announce that two of the four vaccines are already on the provisional pathway. For the other two vaccines it is expected that there will be an application to be on that pathway. As Professor Skerritt said, that means we are in a position where potentially by the end of January there may be approvals for rollout and delivery commencing in March.

Our goal, our intention and our expectation is to ensure that every Australian who seeks to be vaccinated will be vaccinated during the course of 2021. That is immensely important for jobs, for livelihoods and, above all else, for lives and security around Australia. At the same time, we've been able to secure 134.8 million vaccine units directly through these purchasing programs and another 25.5 million units through the COVAX facility. That means we have enough vaccine, through future purchasing, for three times the Australian population. So, we're investing, and we're preparing to save and protect Australian lives.