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While some residents of the UK are beginning to receive the COVID-19 vaccination this coming week, it appears here in Australia, we will not receive it until March 2021 and then as in the UK, in a phased rollout with front line workers and the elderly and the more vulnerable first in line.

As reported in the UK regulators have approved the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech SE, but they stress that this release is for emergency use not general use, although that does mean it could be rolled out to certain member of different high risk groups in the UK as early as next week, not the general public.

With the vaccination clearly a major key to international travel, with all of us I am sure wishing it was available tomorrow, it needs to be taken into account that the UK approval is an emergency approval related to Britain’s tragic death toll, reported to be in the region of 60,000 people.

Greg Hunt, Australia’s Minister for Health, said that the government welcomed the emergency approval, particularly given the over 1.6 million cases in the UK, adding, “I have again spoken to the Australian CEO of Pfizer and they remain on track for vaccine delivery once it is approved for use in Australia by the independent regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration”, adding, “Pfizer continues to work with the Therapeutic Goods Administration, providing data for safety and efficacy as part of the approval process”, and “Our advice remains that the timeline for a decision on approval is expected by the end of January 2021, and our planning is for first vaccine delivery in March 2021.”

It also appears that according to the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration’s, John Skerritt, the UK and US were both operating on a very different timeline to the Australian Government, adding, “They’re not approvals that those two countries are talking about, they’re emergency use authorisations, and they’re really reflecting the desperate situation of those countries”, and “We have to remember on many days, day after day the US is having more deaths than we’ve had in the whole year of the pandemic here in Australia, so it reflects the desperate situation of those countries and these authorisations require the delivery of the vaccine to be very tightly and closely monitored.”

The vaccine is one of four that the Australian government has agreed to purchase, with according to Pfizer, their vaccine consists of a two-dose schedule of two injections, three weeks apart.

A report by John Alwyn-Jones