James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government has kept Australians safe through the COVID pandemic, especially when compared to the rest of the world? Will the minister also advise the House on how the government will continue to keep Australians safe?

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 Sturt, who has been one of the greatest advocates for his state opening up tomorrow, of Australians returning to South Australia and engaging with the rest of the country. It is a signature moment, and it comes at the time that we see around the world another wave of COVID, a continuing pandemic, in particular ravaging Europe—and we think of those in Europe and pray for them. At this moment, 257 million cases around the world have been diagnosed since the pandemic began and over 5.15 million people—5,150,000 people—have lost their lives to COVID officially, with the real number inevitably vastly higher. Indeed, there have been over 500,000 cases a day over the last week. There are now almost 7,000 lives lost a day around the world.

Against that background, as the Prime Minister has just said, our great and abiding national achievement is to have one of the lowest death rates in the world, to have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and to have one of the strongest economic recoveries in the world. If we had imagined and envisaged over five million lives lost 20 months ago—and inevitably vastly higher beyond the official figures—and then compared it with where Australia is now we would have taken that. Albeit it has been hard, difficult and challenging and lives have been lost and so many people have struggled, Australia has been magnificent. What that means is that we now have a vaccination rate of 91.5 per cent first dose and 85.1 per cent second dose, and over 99 per cent of our over-70s have come forward to be vaccinated and protected in numbers beyond imagination. And we will continue to do this. We will continue with that vaccination program, now with one of the world's earliest whole-of-nation booster programs. We've already had 330,000 boosters, well ahead of expectations and schedule at this time. But now we move forward as well with our treatments, with sotrovimab and ronapreve—the monoclonal antibodies that can and have been saving lives—with molnupiravir and the Pfizer protein inhibitor as they come forward with 300,000 and 500,000 units. As they are approved, they will be made available. All of these things come together to save lives, protect lives and give us a chance to regain our lives.