Scott Morrison calls in the ARMY to help assist with Australia’s behind-schedule coronavirus vaccine rollout
- Australian Defence Force enlisted to help with coronavirus vaccine rollout
- First of the ADF personnel will be involved as early next week, Greg Hunt says
- Will help vaccinate elderly Australians in aged care in regional and remote areas
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called in the Australian Defence Force to help get the nation’s coronavirus vaccine rollout back on schedule.
Military personnel have been enlisted to help vaccinate elderly Australians in aged care facilities in mainly regional and remote areas.
The call comes after the federal government fell behind schedule during the first few days of the nation’s biggest ever vaccination rollout.
ADF doctors and nurses will undergo training this week.
‘We’re expecting the first of the ADF from next week, if not sooner,’ federal health minister Greg Hunt told Nine News.
The Prime Minister has enlisted the Australian Defence Force to assist with the nation’s coronavirus vaccination rollout. Pictured is Gold Coast nurse Zoe Park getting the jab
The program fell short of of its target for 60,000 Australians expected to get the jab in the first week.
As of Monday night, only 42,000 Australians have had their first dose, including more than 13,000 elderly residents in 158 aged care facilities.
The Government has previously promised 240 homes would be complete by the end of last week.
Mr Hunt assured the progressive rollout will ramp up.
‘It’s been done that way for reasons of safety and security,’ the minister told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday.
‘We will continue to roll it out and these arrivals of vaccines are very good and the continued expansion of the program is good.’
He added more than 300,000 doses will be distributed across the nation in the coming days.
‘Over the current 10-day period, we will make almost 300,000 doses available to the states and that will be the two distributions of Pfizer and one of AstraZeneca,’ Mr Hunt said.
Australian Defence Force personnel will continue to assist the federal government during the pandemic. Pictured are Australian Defence Force waiting for returned travellers to arrive at Sydney Airport
Aged care resident Jane Malysiak (right) was the first Australian to receive the Pfizer vaccine on February 21 as Prime Minister Scott Morrison (left) watches on
Federal Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck says the target of vaccinating all aged care residents within six weeks of the rollout’s start date remains on track.
All Australians are expected to be vaccinated by October, which is seven months away.
Experts have mixed views on how the the rollout’s progress in its early stages.
‘I’ve been saying for a while that October is a pretty tough deadline to meet,’ Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid told the Nine Network on Monday.
Dr Khorshid said the end of the year was a more realistic target.
Almost 42,000 Australians have received their first dose so far, well short of the 60,000 target. Pictured is aged care resident John Healywho was among the first to be vaccinated
Infectious disease expert Sanjaya Senanayake is not concerned about the delay.
‘This is going to take a long time, we talked about it being the end of October. But I suspect it will probably be by the end of the year,’ he told Nine.
‘You want to iron out wrinkles at the start so you start off slow and build things up.’
Only the Pfizer vaccine has been administered so far, with AstraZeneca does expected to become available within 10 days.
Pharmaceutical giant CSL is manufacturing 50 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine at its facility in Victoria, where one million doses are ready now.
‘We’re close to making one million doses a week,’ Mr Larkins told a parliamentary inquiry.
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