Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister please update the House on how breakthrough COVID-19 treatments, along with Australia's vaccine program, are helping to save lives and save livelihoods?

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

I thank the member for Wentworth, who, with his international experience, will know that the pandemic continues to rage worldwide. There have been 444,000 cases, with 6½ thousand lives lost, in the last 24 hours alone. Against that background, the vaccination program in Australia is saving lives and protecting lives. We're now at 32.9 million vaccinations in Australia. As the Prime Minister mentioned, we've passed the 85 per cent milestone for first doses, and we are on the cusp of the third great milestone—the 70 per cent mark for second doses—as part of the national road map. Significantly, there have been 1.9 million doses in the last seven days, 3.9 million doses in the last 14 days and 7.8 million doses in the last four weeks. All of these things are about Australians coming forward in record numbers to protect themselves, to protect their friends, to protect their family and to protect their country. Indeed, one of the things I'm most pleased about is that there are now more than one million doses that have gone to those between 12 and 15 years of age, and we're almost at a 60 per cent first-dose rate in that group.

All of these vaccinations are very important protection, but they're not the only protection. What we've also been able to do is to acquire critical treatments, which are an additional, complementary protection for Australians. Previously, we've mentioned sotrovimab: 31,000 doses of a monoclonal antibody, which is given in a hospital setting. That's already in use in Australia, saving lives and protecting lives. But in recent weeks we've been able to announce acquisitions of drugs such as 300,000 doses of molnupiravir, an oral antibody, and 500,000 doses of the Pfizer oral antibody—again, a pill. This means that we can ensure that, wherever people are, they're given that protection, that ability, if they are diagnosed or they've been exposed, to have that additional support.

None of these are a guarantee. They are not as strong as vaccines, and it's very important to say that vaccines are the front-line treatment, but only yesterday we had the approval from the TGA of Ronapreve. We've just acquired 15,000 doses of Ronapreve, a monoclonal antibody combination therapy. It's for being treated in hospital and it has a 70 per cent reduction in the likelihood of fatality for those to whom it's applied. All of these treatments and vaccines are coming together to save lives, to protect lives and to give Australians their lives back.