Australia’s vaccination program could take a ‘couple of years’

Mary-Louise McLaws, an adviser to the World Health Organisation, and Professor at UNSW, said at the current rate it will take Australia a “couple of years” to vaccinate 85 per cent of its population.

The longer it takes for Australia to reach this goal, and achieve relative herd immunity, the longer Australia will remain vulnerable to further outbreaks — and the international borders will remain shut.

“At about this rate of injecting it would take us a couple of years to vaccinate 85 per cent of the population who want to be vaccinated,” she told the ABC on Monday.

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“We’re going to have to do a lot of rethinking. And mass vaccination. Even with that — I’ve estimated that each state will need at least two mass vaccination sites, and the largest states will need three or four sites.

“They should start thinking about it now.”

Professor McLaws said the government would need to “ramp it up to about 100,000 to 120,000 doses per day” to reach their targets by 2022.

She said it might sound simple to raise the number of doses given per day, but it includes a lot of “logistics” and planning.

The most recent daily tally of vaccines given in a 24-hour period is 27,209.

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly disputed Prof McLaws’ claims.

“I think if you really looked closely at the data from the rollout so far, this is not a straight line, it is an exponential curve.

“We are right now on the large increase of the daily doses.”

Prof McLaws has previously criticised the government’s plan to rollout the vaccine primarily using GP clinics instead of mass vaccination hubs. She told the AFR last on Friday that a move to vaccination hubs would assist with ramping up the number of doses given.

“The current plan presumes we’re all middle-class and have the ability to access a local GP during work hours or early evenings,” Prof McLaws said.

“Many people who are unemployed, disadvantaged, working multiple part-time jobs, disaffected or can’t get away from work might not be able or willing to visit a GP clinic in their neighbourhood.”

Prof McLaws said mass vaccination hubs were reliant on secure supply of vaccines, but said GP clinics wouldn’t be able to service the country’s entire rollout.

She said GP clinics would begin needing to vaccinate up to 50 people a day who would then need to sit in the clinics for observation.

She said “even in a pandemic” GPs would still need to see regular patients for other health and wellbeing concerns.