Australia has secured one million additional doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from the Republic of Poland in a major boost to our rollout program.
The additional doses will be targeted at Australians aged 20 to 39 years of age - the cohort identified in the Doherty modelling as being the peak transmitters of COVID-19.
These doses are on top of the 40 million Pfizer doses Australia has already secured for 2021.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has provided regulatory approval for the supply of the doses, which have been manufactured at Pfizer's facilities in Belgium.
More than 500,000 of the doses will be prioritised to 12 Greater Sydney Local Government Areas where the COVID-19 outbreak continues to grow.
This will give everyone aged 20 to 39 years in the 12 LGAs an opportunity to be vaccinated.
The doses will be administered in state clinics across Greater Sydney this week.
The balance will be distributed on a per capita basis to other states and territories, to fast-track the vaccination of 20 to 39 year old's and other high risk groups.
In other news, we have now administered more than 15 million vaccine doses around the country - including approximately 1.5 million over the past week.
We have achieved a record of more than 270,000 people getting vaccinated in a single day, on 12 August - and now one in four of the Australian population over 16 is fully vaccinated.
Supplying and producing the vaccine
The ability to manufacture vaccines onshore has been essential to the progress of our rollout and CSL has now manufactured and supplied over 15 million doses of vaccine for use in Australia.
Last week, over 1 million doses of Pfizer and over 1 million doses of AstraZeneca were released for distribution.
Over the coming days, the TGA will conduct sample testing of over 2 million doses of Pfizer vaccine, along with over 400,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine produced onshore by CSL, prior to releasing the vaccines for distribution. Included in this figure is the additional 1 million Pfizer doses which has been secured by the Commonwealth.
Distributing the vaccine
With support from our Distribution Partners DHL and Linfox, more than 2.3 vaccine doses were delivered across Australia to metropolitan, rural and remote locations, along with 4,471 deliveries of consumables.
- Ordering and Delivery: 99% of vaccine orders were completed last week with 4 orders AstraZeneca to be finalised today.
- Australia's assistance to the Pacific: This week another 420,000 doses were made available for distribution to the Pacific, with more than 1.6 doses now provided to DFAT. This will help our friends across the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
Supporting outbreak situations
We continue to support outbreak situations across the country be facilitating emergency orders of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
SYDNEY
Since Monday 5 July, there have been 751 requests for additional AstraZeneca doses including:
- 651 requests from Primary Care (208,000 doses)
- 100 requests from Community Pharmacies (39,700 doses)
BRISBANE
There have been 86 requests for additional AstraZeneca orders from primary care sites and pharmacies since the lock down began on 31 July including:
- 71 requests from Primary Care (24,700 doses)
- 15 requests from Community Pharmacies (2,800 doses)
MELBOURNE
There have been 34 requests for additional AstraZeneca orders from primary care sites since the sixth lock down began on 5 August including:
- 30 requests from Primary Care (10,200 doses)
- 4 requests from Community Pharmacies (1,300 doses)
ACT
There have been 14 requests for additional AstraZeneca orders from primary care sites and pharmacies since the lock down was announced including:
- 3 requests from Primary Care (1,600 doses)
- 11 requests from Community Pharmacies (3,600 doses)
Administering the vaccine
This week, 1,525,969 doses were administered across the country, taking the total number of doses administered 15.2 million. It took 45 days to reach our first million doses of vaccine administered and 5 days for the most recent.
- Total sites: This week we had a total of 5,492 general practices, 138 Commonwealth Vaccination Clinics, 3,209 Pharmacies and 172 Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services delivering vaccines, along with 514 state and territory sites, taking the total number of vaccination sites across the country to 9,525. In the coming week, we will have 35 additional general practices administering AstraZeneca.
- Aged Care: With our vaccine workforce service providers, we continue to focus on those most at risk in our residential aged care facilities and have now completed first and second dose visits to all 2568 facilities.
- Disability: We continue to ramp up our visits to disability residents with complex needs who require in-reach services. More than 18,000 people with a disability in a residential setting have now received at least one dose of vaccine.
About the Vaccine Operations Centre
