Pharmacy Daily | Australia COVAX rollout slipping back

AUSTRALIA'S COVID-19 vaccination (COVAX) rollout campaign is slipping behind other developed nations, an analysis by strategy firm, Provocate, reveals.

Australia fell five places in the past month from 5th to 10th of 14 nations benchmarked by the Australian Department of Health, overtaken by Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and the European Union at the same point in their own vaccination rollouts.

Lower ranked countries, such as New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Japan, also grew at about double the pace of Australia in their third month of rollout.

Provocate Managing Director, Troy Bilsborough, noted that while the Victorian outbreak had boosted vaccination uptake over the past week, the daily number of patients receiving the jab was still half the 200,000 a day required to meet the Federal Government's target of completing the campaign by the end of the year.

"Australia's lagging rate of vaccination at home is having a significant impact on its global standing, as well as the risk of market share losses to competitor countries that reopen faster," he said.

"We remain concerned that the daily boost in COVID-19 immunisations driven by Victorian lockdown fear will only be temporary unless governments can harness this lapse in vaccine hesitancy to their advantage.

"Our outlook remains unchanged - until Australia is consistently averaging at least one million jabs in arms per week, every week, then business should plan for a vaccine rollout completion closer to 2023 than 2021."

However, Tourism Minister, Dan Tehan, told a conference in Sydney yesterday that 4.2 million Australians had already received a COVID-19 jab, including one million just in in the last 13 days - compared to 47 days for the first million doses.

"My hope is that we will continue to see that apace...our hope is that we will have all Australians vaccinated by the end of the year," he said.

"We think that's tracking very well."