Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very careful not to over promise. The time frame required for us to ramp up production capacity of that is quite a considerable one. Considerations of those things are being undertaken, but, in the interim, what the government has done is ensure that we have adequate doses of available vaccines with a range of different types, so that we can ensure that we have adequate capacity to vaccinate the Australian community and, of course, where possible—I'm aware that Senator Payne and Senator Seselja have been engaged in this—to assist our Pacific neighbours.

At this stage we have 40 million doses, based on the announcement this morning, of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. We have 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, 51 million doses of the Novavax and access to 25.6 million doses from the COVAX Facility. So we have access to considerable volumes of vaccine, over 100 million doses of vaccine. We will continue to ensure that we have the capacity required. I acknowledge that there is capacity, with the mRNA vaccines, to tweak the vaccines. I'm aware that the producers of those have indicated they are inclined to do that, but it will take a considerable period of time to— (Time expired)