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

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister please provide an update to the House on how the Morrison government is continuing to support Australians through the COVID-19 pandemic?

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

I want to thank the member for Higgins for her work both as a clinician and as a National Health and Medical Research Council ranked and recognised researcher over her career. One important thing that we have seen is all of the elements of the Australian health system coming together to protect Australians during the course of the pandemic. As my friend the Deputy Prime Minister said very clearly, in a world where two million lives were lost to COVID this year, there have been no Australians who have caught COVID in this country and passed from COVID this year. That juxtaposition is almost unimaginable, and yet that is what Australia has achieved. It's achieved it through all of the actions that have been taken together by the Australian government, the states and territories and, in particular, the Australian people, the health and medical research sector and health and medical workers.

Our support for that has included over $2 billion to the aged-care sector for its work to help protect Australians through COVID and over $6 billion to the Medicare sector, including support for more than 60 million telehealth consultations—the largest, most positive change in Medicare since Medicare was created, a fundamental transformation of that system undertaken to deal with COVID but embedded for future generations. In addition to that, our support includes over $7.2 billion for the vaccine rollout and, furthermore, $9 billion for the hospital system and PPE.

In terms of the vaccine rollout, we've now hit 6.5 million doses that have been delivered in Australia. That includes the fact that in the last three days we've had 230,000 doses delivered. Over the equivalent period a week ago, on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, there were 226,300 doses. So, interestingly, over these last three days since the ATAGI announcement we've seen an increase of almost 4,000 doses from the comparable period a week before. At the same time, 26.7 per cent of Australians, 48 per cent of those over 50 and, very importantly, 65 per cent of those over 70 years of age have had vaccinations. And we continue this program. Each day, every day, we're seeing more Australians vaccinated, we're seeing lives protected and we're seeing a result. In a world of two million lives lost this year alone, that has been translated to an Australian outcome of no person having lost their life to COVID caught in Australia. (Time expired)