Australia's COVID-19 vaccination program is well under way, with more than 500,000 Australians receiving a free jab as part of the Phase 1 rollout.
There have been more than 507,000 vaccines at the close of business on Friday. 329,000 vaccines have been administered in state and territory vaccination clinics, 97,000 vaccines have been administered in general practices and more than 80,000 aged care residents have been vaccinated.
Our GP's have played a vital role in this expansion and have not only been vaccinating over the week, but many practices are continuing to vaccinate on Saturday and Sunday this weekend.
Over 1,100 general practices, GP-led respiratory clinics and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services are already providing vaccinations to people eligible in Phase 1b.
This will grow to a broad national footprint of more than 4,000 general practices by the end of April. These will be complemented by more than 100 Commonwealth Vaccination Clinics and more than 100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Health Services.
The roll out for the next week and further expansion is now well underway. The first of the 50 million Australian made CSL doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine have already been distributed and will now be distributed on an ongoing basis.
As part of our Vaccination Strategy, Australia placed an absolute priority on sovereign domestic vaccine production at CSL in August last year.
That decision has ensured that Australia is one of the few countries with strong, clear domestic supplies going forwards.
