Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister please update the House on how the vaccine rollout is continuing to ramp up, highlighted by a record number of vaccinations being administered last week to implement the national plan?

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

I thank the member for Ryan for his question. He is the son of a pharmacist and proudly so. There are now almost 3,000 pharmacies around Australia contributing to the vaccine rollout. They have already delivered over 311,000 vaccinations around Australia, and that's set to accelerate over the coming weeks, particularly as the Moderna vaccine arrives in Australia and is added to the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca vaccines—adding to and supplementing the additional half a million doses which the Prime Minister and the Australian government have been able to secure as a swap from Singapore. That will mean earlier access to more doses for more Australians.

We know, of course, that this challenge is affecting every country. Singapore is facing its own challenges. We know that the world has seen over 683,000 cases and 8½ thousand lives officially lost in the last 24 hours, in the latest evidence of a global pandemic which continues unabated. Against that background, the fact that we have been able to deliver record weekly vaccinations at a rate in advance of even the highest weeks in the United States and the United Kingdom is a testament to the work of all of our health professionals right across Australia: our pharmacists and our GPs, and I particularly want to give a shoutout to our nurses, who've played such an extraordinary role throughout the pandemic in providing health care but also in providing vaccination, and everybody involved in our state clinics, in particular our Indigenous clinics through the Aboriginal medical services. All of these are coming together.

One particular figure that I want to focus on today, as we've now reached 19.36 million vaccinations, is the 12.1 million Australians who've had first doses. That means there are 2.4 million Australians to take us to the 70 per cent first-dose rate and 4.4 million Australians to take us to the 16½ million which will represent the 80 per cent rate. That's 2.4 million Australians to get to 70 per cent and 4.4 million Australians to get to 80 per cent. Those are first doses, but we know that once they're through that door they'll keep coming back. That's the critical thing. They will be back. That means we have Australians who are coming forward and presenting to be vaccinated. It's about protecting them and saving their lives, as we can see in the massive difference in lives lost between New South Wales now and Victoria a year ago. That's why vaccination matters: it saves lives and protects lives.