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 The country's medical regulator was one of the first in the world to
complete a comprehensive approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday, noting it was a year
since the first local coronavirus case was detected.
Vaccination of priority groups with the Pfizer vaccine is expected
to begin in late February at 80,000 doses per week, Health Minister
Greg Hunt told reporters.
Pfizer had told the Australian government it anticipated continuous
supply but would provide global production guidance "in mid-February
for March and beyond on a weekly basis," he said.
The Australian rollout update comes after AstraZeneca Plc told
European Union officials on Friday it would cut deliveries of its
vaccine to the bloc by 60% in the first quarter due to production
problems.
Hunt said AstraZeneca had advised Australia the company has "had a
significant supply shock and so that means we won't have as much of
that AstraZeneca international in March as they had previously
promised".
The AstraZeneca vaccine is yet to be approved by Australia, which
expects to start CSL's domestic supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine in
March, earlier than planned, at 1 million doses a week, he said.
"The decision to pay a premium for an onshore, secure, sovereign
vaccine manufacturing capacity via CSL, that puts Australia in a
vastly more secure position than almost any other country in the
world," Hunt said.
Australia has set a target of 4 million vaccine doses by April. It
has also committed to supplying vaccines to Pacific Island nations
on a later timetable.
The Pfizer vaccine has been provisionally approved by the
Therapeutic Goods Administration's (TGA) for Australians aged 16
years and over.
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 Australia will administer the
two doses of the vaccine to each recipient at
the recommended time.
Quarantine and border personnel, frontline
health workers and aged care and disability
staff and residents will be the first group to
receive vaccines.
There have been no new cases of community
transmission in Australia in the past seven
days, and there are no Australians with
coronavirus in hospital intensive care units.
Hunt contrasted this with six million cases
globally in the last 10 days and 125,000 lives
lost. "That comparison is almost
unbelievable, the difference between where we are in Australia and
overseas," he said.
To ensure that remained the case, Australia on Monday suddenly
suspended its travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours and
ordered all those who had arrived since Jan. 14 to isolate and be
tested, after New Zealand confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in
the community in months.
"This will be done out of an abundance of caution whilst more is
learned about the event and the case," Hunt told reporters later in
the day.
 Australia has had just under 28,800 cases in the past year, the
overwhelming majority in Victoria state, and 909 deaths.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Byron Kaye; Additioanal reporting
by Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Editing by Diane Craft and Sam Holmes)
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