Government buys Pfizer boosters ATAGI says just get jabbed

The federal government has secured an extra 85 million booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine for 2022 and 2023, as Australia’s top vaccine advisory group urged everyone in Sydney to get jabbed “with any available vaccine” due to a shortage of Pfizer doses.

Sixty million of the Pfizer doses will be delivered in 2022 and another 25 million in 2023, in addition to the 40 million already due to arrive in Australia this year.

People wait for their allocated time slot earlier this month at the NSW vaccination hub in Homebush.Credit:Getty

But the vast majority of the 2021 allocation of Pfizer will arrive in the fourth quarter and while approximately one million doses of the vaccine are due to arrive each week â€" after a painfully slow start â€" Australia has experienced massive shortages until now.

The significant shift by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) â€" which until Saturday had advised that Australians under 60 should get Pfizer because of the extremely low risk of blood clots â€" came after Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid had both called on the expert panel to shift its advice.

In a statement, the body said that people over 18 years in greater Sydney should “strongly consider getting vaccinated with any available vaccine including COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca”.

“This is on the basis of the increasing risk of COVID-19 and ongoing constraints of Comirnaty (Pfizer) supplies. In addition, people in areas where outbreaks are occurring can receive the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine 4 to 8 weeks after the first dose, rather than the usual 12 weeks.”

The shift by ATAGI is designed to speed up the vaccine rollout in Sydney and has potential implications across the country, though some Australians have expressed hesitance about AstraZeneca and a desire to wait until Pfizer is widely available.

The change came as NSW reported a record 163 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, including 45 people infectious in the community, and as the federal government confirmed it would send an extra 50,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Sydney.

This comes a day after other states rejected calls by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to send their Pfizer allocations to her state ahead of a national cabinet meeting.

During the meeting, characterised as the longest and most-heated in recent memory, Ms Berejiklian instead requested the Commonwealth re-direct vaccine doses away from GP clinics and towards state-run vaccination centres.

Scott Morrison was frustrated by ATAGI’s conservative vaccine advice.Credit:AFR

That request was rejected out of hand by Lieutenant-General John Frewen, who is leading the vaccine rollout and who warned such a move could result in GPs having to cancel vaccination appointments for weeks.

Mr Morrison then said that move would not happen and pointedly told Ms Berejiklian, according to three sources familiar with the meeting who asked not to be named, that a hard lockdown was the way out of the current crisis for Sydney.

At the beginning of the Sydney outbreak, Mr Morrison had praised Ms Berejiklian for not locking down too hard - in contrast to the Victorian government, which locked down the state for months in 2020 and was criticised by the federal government.

A federal source familiar with the discussions said that several premiers, led by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and WA Premier Mark McGowan, questioned how strict Sydney’s actual lockdown was and that source suggested Sydney likely faced a lengthy lockdown.

“The view put to her was this is not a proper lockdown, that she should shut down Western Sydney, put in a curfew and then put in place some police check-points,” the source said, adding that in the next week that Victoria and South Australia would likely exit lockdown - a move that would politically damage the NSW Premier.

Ms Berejiklian pushed back hard against criticism during the meeting and outlined the steps she had taken to slow the spread of the virus in Sydney.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the new Pfizer doses meant every Australian would be able to receive a booster dose of the vaccine if required, an issue that medical experts have flagged as an issue that Australia needed to address for some time.

“This is a significant shot in the arm for Australia’s vaccine supply. Every Australian will have access to a booster shot if it is needed,” Mr Morrison said.

It’s been suggested that annual coronavirus vaccinations may be required, similar to the flu shot which is redesigned twice every year, but experts said the jury was still out on this issue.

Burnet Institute director of disease elimination Professor Heidi Drummer said “we’ve really got to get this pandemic under control before we will even know whether and what those vaccines will look like”.

There is also a question of whether it would be ethical for developed countries to give a third vaccine dose to the public when other countries dealing with mass death and suffering still didn’t have enough supply for initial doses.

“If the virus is still raging in parts of Africa or Asia or other countries, that actually puts us at risk because variants might come up where we don’t have sufficient immunity with our current vaccines, and we could then see a resurgence in the virus even in vaccinated people,” she said.

The UK, which has fully vaccinated a touch over 65 per cent of its population, is planning to begin a booster program for over 50s from September.

Australia has thus far only fully vaccinated about 15 per cent of the population but more than one million Australians have received a jab in the past week.

Stay across the most crucial developments related to the pandemic with the Coronavirus Update. Sign up for the weekly newsletter.

James Massola is political correspondent for the Sun-Herald & Sunday Age. He won the Kennedy award for Outstanding Foreign Correspondent while posted in Jakarta and wrote The Great Cave Rescue. He was previously chief political correspondent.

Aisha Dow is health editor with The Age and a former city reporter.

Share this post