COVID-19: Australia short of 3million AstraZeneca vaccine

Australia said on Tuesday it has not yet received 3 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine amid export curbs by the European Union, leaving a major hole in its early nationwide inoculation drive.

Authorizes could only vaccinate 670,000 out of the 4million first doses of vaccine pledge to administer by the end of March.

This is as a result of the blockage of AstraZeneca vaccine exports to Australia in the wake of the drug maker’s failure to meet its shipment pledge.

Acting Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said, “We were scheduled to have received over 3 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from overseas by now, which have not arrived in Australia because of the problems with shipments that we’ve seen happening here and in other parts of the world.”

The majority of Australia is near 26 million population will be administered the AstraZeneca vaccine, with 50 million doses set to be produced locally from the end of March. About 2.5 million doses have been locally produced so far with thousands of doses already cleared testing and distributed to the vaccination sites.

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia said that slow domestic vaccine approvals and logistics issues will now push deliveries to June, he also tasked to help with the rollout of the nationwide inoculation programme from May.

“We have been told that the delay is linked to supply chain delays rather than the ability of the pharmacy network to participate,” he added.

However, National authorities said vaccination centres would be doubled by the end of the week as they look to ramp up the vaccination programme that aims to provide at least one dose to every person by the end of October.

Kamila/Reuters