Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister update the House on Australia's progress in securing and producing a vaccine for COVID-19 and will the minister outline the importance of such a vaccine for our recovery from this pandemic?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Reid, who of course comes with a deep commitment to mental health and a deep career in terms of having provided that support both practically and at a policy level.

Taking on board all of the steps which Australia has implemented and delivered in regard to COVID, there is still no pathway completely out of this unless and until we have a vaccine. That's because, as we set out earlier—as the Prime Minister set out, to which I referred also—the world is facing an enormous number of cases on a daily basis. There have been more than 500,000 cases a day, on average, over the last week. That is why a vaccine is a fundamentally important step.

I am very pleased to be able to inform the House that last week the Prime Minister announced that we had secured two additional contracts, advanced purchasing agreements, for vaccines—firstly, for 40 million units of Novavax's adjuvant protein vaccine, for delivery during 2021, commencing in the first quarter; and, secondly, for 10 million units of Pfizer's mRNA vaccine, the first delivery of which is also expected in the first quarter. These vaccines are of course subject to clinical trials and regulatory approvals, but the advice we have from SITAG, the Science and Technical Advisory Group, led by Professor Brendan Murphy and Professor Paul Kelly, is that the immune response for both T cells and antibodies is very positive for all four of the vaccines. What does that mean in practice? It means that our pathway to delivering vaccines for next year is growing and strengthening. We have already put in place acquisition for 51 million units of the University of Queensland vaccine to be produced with CSL—the molecular clamp vaccine. In addition to that, there are 33.8 million units of the AstraZeneca vaccine; 3.8 million will come from overseas but, importantly, 30 million units are to be manufactured here in Australia. Of those 30 million units, the first step of that process begins today. That process of manufacturing vaccines here in Australia begins today.

There are many steps in it, but this is about making sure we have the delivery commencing in the first half of next year with an expectation in the first quarter—most likely in March. That means that Australians have the potential to have a pathway through this over and above what we've done to contain the virus. This will protect and save lives in Australia going forward.