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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 11:27 pm
by Chris Preston
shpalman wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:33 pm
The risk-benefit calculation for the AstraZeneca vaccine is rather different in Australia where there's a much lower risk from covid itself.
This announcement is more precautionary than anything else. It only applies to the Phase 1b group who are being currently vaccinated. Elderly people aged 70 and over, Health care workers not yet vaccinated, Household contacts of quarantine and border workers, Critical and high risk workers who are currently employed, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 55 years and over and Adults with an underlying medical condition or significant disability.

There is an expectation there will be more information available when the Phase 2a vaccinations begin.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:05 am
by Martin_B
Herainestold wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:44 pm
shpalman wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:09 pm
you didn't not get 700,000 from the UK
I thought they were making their own AZ.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... 0ec7155db5
Getting 3.8 million (well, ordered 3.8 million, no idea how many we are actually getting!), making another 50 million doses from a culture.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 5:59 am
by shpalman

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:51 am
by Chris Preston
More likely from people older people who are finding the recommendation confusing. If it is not OK for those under 50, why is it OK for them? Also some who are under 50 wanting to know when the Pfizer vaccine is going to be available to them and should they wait.

Also the Government announced today that they have another 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine ordered. That will allow most of the population to get the Pfizer vaccine with only 5 or 6 million needing the AstraZeneca vaccine. But it will push out the timetable to Q1 2022.

Australia has already sent 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine they had ordered to PNG. The Pfizer vaccine will be inappropriate for most of PNG due to lack of infrastructure.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:10 am
by shpalman
Fishnut wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:24 pm
Aus is stopping AZ vaccine for under-50s

Has any other medicine ever had such a low bar for withdrawal?
According to COVID-19 deaths by age group and sex for Australia, there have been 5 (male) deaths in the 0-49 age group.

That's out of slightly less than 17 million people but for the purposes of the vaccine risk:benefit calculation let's limit it to 10.6 million in the 20-49 age range.

So that's half a (male) death per million; the AstraZeneca vaccine is causing a few deaths per million. If Australia decided to give everyone the AstraZeneca is would cause more deaths than covid has so far, in the <50 age group, so assuming it doesn't all go wrong, it would cause more deaths than it's likely to prevent.

It's worse if you're a woman under the age of 50 in Australia because in that case (a) you seem to have ~zero chance of dying from covid and (b) the chance of developing a clotting problem from the vaccine seems to be higher.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 5:53 pm
by Herainestold
Martin_B wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:05 am
Herainestold wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:44 pm
shpalman wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:09 pm
you didn't not get 700,000 from the UK
I thought they were making their own AZ.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... 0ec7155db5
Getting 3.8 million (well, ordered 3.8 million, no idea how many we are actually getting!), making another 50 million doses from a culture.
Are those 50 million being made, Martin? I see articles about the plan, but is actual production happening, and at what rate?

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:07 pm
by Chris Preston
They are being manufactured in Melbourne. 1.3 million doses have been delivered. Current manufacturing rate is roughly half a million doses per week.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:09 pm
by Herainestold
Chris Preston wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:07 pm
They are being manufactured in Melbourne. 1.3 million doses have been delivered. Current manufacturing rate is roughly half a million doses per week.
Thank you Chris.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:53 am
by shpalman
Australia is on target with its rollout of adverse blood clotting:
“There have been about 700,000 doses of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine administered in Australia to date, so while numbers are small, two cases … equates to a frequency of one in 350,000,” the TGA said.

“The UK regulator … has concluded from its review of cases reported in the UK that the overall risk of these rare blood clots was approximately one in 250,000 who receive the vaccine.”

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2021 3:09 pm
by Herainestold
Australia's borders to remain closed, possibly even after country is vaccinated.
Mr Hunt suggested at a news conference in Canberra on Tuesday the international border closures could last much longer and stay in place even if the entire population had been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

“Vaccination alone is no guarantee that you can open up,” Mr Hunt said.

“If the whole country were vaccinated, you couldn’t just open the borders.

“We still have to look at a series of different factors: transmission, longevity [of vaccine protection] and the global impact - and those are factors which the world is learning about,” he said.
Unfortunate for stranded Australians, and those like my friends who have an Australian grandson they have never seen in person. Ultimately I think it is a wise precaution, as it appears vaccines do not inhibit transmission , although they do mitigate the death rate. Australia should stay the course, keep borders shut and roll out vaccines in an orderly fashion.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal ... 57ixi.html

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Sat May 15, 2021 5:41 am
by Chris Preston
Did my bit today to assist South Australia's abysmally low vaccination rate. COVID-19 vaccines given is still less than 5 per 100 people. The clinic has permission to open every second Saturday for 3 hours allowing 36 people to be vaccinated in that time.

The Government has just purchased 25 million Moderna doses to be delivered in Q4 2021. This will include 10 million doses of the current version and 15 million booster doses to address variants.

Getting the population fully vaccinated by October is a pipedream. More likely to be July 2022.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Sat May 15, 2021 12:45 pm
by Herainestold
Chris Preston wrote:
Sat May 15, 2021 5:41 am
Did my bit today to assist South Australia's abysmally low vaccination rate. COVID-19 vaccines given is still less than 5 per 100 people. The clinic has permission to open every second Saturday for 3 hours allowing 36 people to be vaccinated in that time.

The Government has just purchased 25 million Moderna doses to be delivered in Q4 2021. This will include 10 million doses of the current version and 15 million booster doses to address variants.

Getting the population fully vaccinated by October is a pipedream. More likely to be July 2022.
Why so slow? Is it problems with Astra Zeneca production/acceptance? Or is it more just the difficulties of the vaccine market? Any thought towards acquiring sputnik or Chinese vaccines?

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Mon May 17, 2021 5:11 am
by Chris Preston
Slowness is mainly around decisions (all those under 50 won't be getting the AstraZeneca vaccine), availability of specific vaccines (plenty of AstraZeneca vaccine, but limited supplies of Pfizer vaccines), and how the roll out has been handled (focus on high needs groups first and then general population) as well as state decisions on how to roll out (in South Australia it has been largely hospitals and larger medical clinics to date, rather than the creation of purpose-built vaccination centres). Also there has been a perceived lack of need for haste as borders are closed and quarantine is in place.

Australia almost certainly won't be approving Sputnik or Sinopharm. Sputnik because it is replication competent and Sinopharm because it is not sufficiently effective.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Mon May 17, 2021 1:20 pm
by Herainestold
Chris Preston wrote:
Mon May 17, 2021 5:11 am
Slowness is mainly around decisions (all those under 50 won't be getting the AstraZeneca vaccine), availability of specific vaccines (plenty of AstraZeneca vaccine, but limited supplies of Pfizer vaccines), and how the roll out has been handled (focus on high needs groups first and then general population) as well as state decisions on how to roll out (in South Australia it has been largely hospitals and larger medical clinics to date, rather than the creation of purpose-built vaccination centres). Also there has been a perceived lack of need for haste as borders are closed and quarantine is in place.

Australia almost certainly won't be approving Sputnik or Sinopharm. Sputnik because it is replication competent and Sinopharm because it is not sufficiently effective.
Thanks Chris. I was trying to figure out what was going on from the media and not getting the smaller details. There are other Chinese vaccines besides
Sinopharm. There is Can Sino and Sinovax, which are being used effectively in some countries.
It is a shame that the Australian vax didn't work out.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Mon May 17, 2021 11:54 pm
by Chris Preston
Sinovac is pretty similar to Sinopharm and has similar efficacy. The CanSino vaccine is a one-shot option like the J&J vaccine and of similar efficacy to that. I doubt any of these would be approved in Australia for efficacy reasons. The CMO has taken a strategy of using the most effective vaccines and getting as many people vaccinated as possible, so that significant transmission is not going to be possible. The current signals are that Australia will ultimately move to mRNA vaccines entirely. They are even going to build the infrastructure to manufacture them locally. There have been enough doses of mRNA vaccines now purchased to vaccinate everyone in the country with 4 doses.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:33 am
by Martin_B
I don't know about our other Antipodeans, but I've just managed to book my first jab. 20th June, so nearly 2 weeks away, and they seem to be taking ~1000 bookings a day and assuming that they'll hit that number on day 1 (yeah, right) so it's possible people who booked earlier appointments may end up bumping me off the list. Fingers crossed.

The waiting list at Royal Perth, where they are only jabbing ~400 a day, was already into July and bookings only opened this morning.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:52 am
by Chris Preston
I had my first vaccine 2 weeks ago. The University Health Centre got approval to give them every second Saturday. I booked in on the first day. 2nd vaccine is scheduled for August.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:22 pm
by shpalman
Chase Arnesen, 32, wanted the AstraZeneca vaccine
“I walked into the royal exhibition building hub last month before the boomers started to bother and decided I’d ask nicely if I could have one,” Arnesen said. “They asked why I was there and I admitted I wasn’t eligible but that I’d heard the AstraZeneca vaccines were woefully underused and asked if I could have one if they had sufficient supply.”

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:48 am
by Herainestold
shpalman wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:22 pm
Chase Arnesen, 32, wanted the AstraZeneca vaccine
“I walked into the royal exhibition building hub last month before the boomers started to bother and decided I’d ask nicely if I could have one,” Arnesen said. “They asked why I was there and I admitted I wasn’t eligible but that I’d heard the AstraZeneca vaccines were woefully underused and asked if I could have one if they had sufficient supply.”
I still think it is sad that Oz abandoned its' made in Australia vax, but it seems to me Oz has lots of time as they have so successfully suppressed the virus. Why not just adhere to the schedule in an orderly manor and start sourcing variant boosters? By the time Oz opens up again, the virus will likely look very different.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:46 am
by Martin_B
Herainestold wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:48 am
shpalman wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:22 pm
Chase Arnesen, 32, wanted the AstraZeneca vaccine
“I walked into the royal exhibition building hub last month before the boomers started to bother and decided I’d ask nicely if I could have one,” Arnesen said. “They asked why I was there and I admitted I wasn’t eligible but that I’d heard the AstraZeneca vaccines were woefully underused and asked if I could have one if they had sufficient supply.”
I still think it is sad that Oz abandoned its' made in Australia vax, but it seems to me Oz has lots of time as they have so successfully suppressed the virus. Why not just adhere to the schedule in an orderly manor and start sourcing variant boosters? By the time Oz opens up again, the virus will likely look very different.
We're still making the AZ vac in Australia, and it's being distributed to the over 50s (because the vaccine is magically safe for over 50s but dangerous for those aged 49 years and 364 days!) with the remainder of the >50 million doses being donated places where they don't have the infrastructure to store and distribute the Pfizer vaccine (PNG, pacific islands, etc).

But we had already ordered ~20 million Pfizer doses even before the AZ's issues were identified, which is fine for the majority of the population to have at least 1 dose, most 2 doses, and if we need to we'll source more from Pfizer (I *think* Moderna has also been approved), but we'll keep on with the suppression plan in the meantime*.

* Some state governments, federal pollies and business muppets think we should abandon the suppression plan and not lockdown when small outbreaks occur because it damages the economy. Fortunately Scotty from Marketing seems to be ignoring them for now, and listening to the experts, having been badly burned (pardon the pun) with not listening to experts regarding forestry management and the bushfires back in Jan 2020.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 7:53 am
by shpalman
Martin_B wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:46 am
Herainestold wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:48 am
I still think it is sad that Oz abandoned its' made in Australia vax, but it seems to me Oz has lots of time as they have so successfully suppressed the virus. Why not just adhere to the schedule in an orderly manor and start sourcing variant boosters? By the time Oz opens up again, the virus will likely look very different.
We're still making the AZ vac in Australia, and it's being distributed to the over 50s (because the vaccine is magically safe for over 50s but dangerous for those aged 49 years and 364 days!)...
Ok how do you think it should be distributed?

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 8:00 am
by Martin_B
shpalman wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 7:53 am
Martin_B wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:46 am
We're still making the AZ vac in Australia, and it's being distributed to the over 50s (because the vaccine is magically safe for over 50s but dangerous for those aged 49 years and 364 days!)...
Ok how do you think it should be distributed?
I have no idea, but if they had instigated some form of consent form allowing under 50s to say they take the risk we might be a little further forward in the vaccine roll-out.

On the other hand, the vaccine roll-out was achingly slow, and the virtual stopping of any vaccines getting into WA has kicked the authorities into setting up major hubs which can vaccinate ~2000 per day, rather than drip-feeding ~100 doses per week into individual GP clinics; so we may soon end up overtaking where we would have been if the old system had continued.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:06 pm
by Herainestold
Martin_B wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 8:00 am
shpalman wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 7:53 am
Martin_B wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:46 am
We're still making the AZ vac in Australia, and it's being distributed to the over 50s (because the vaccine is magically safe for over 50s but dangerous for those aged 49 years and 364 days!)...
Ok how do you think it should be distributed?
I have no idea, but if they had instigated some form of consent form allowing under 50s to say they take the risk we might be a little further forward in the vaccine roll-out.

On the other hand, the vaccine roll-out was achingly slow, and the virtual stopping of any vaccines getting into WA has kicked the authorities into setting up major hubs which can vaccinate ~2000 per day, rather than drip-feeding ~100 doses per week into individual GP clinics; so we may soon end up overtaking where we would have been if the old system had continued.
Why were vaccines stopped getting in to WA?

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 12:48 am
by Martin_B
Herainestold wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:06 pm
Martin_B wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 8:00 am
I have no idea, but if they had instigated some form of consent form allowing under 50s to say they take the risk we might be a little further forward in the vaccine roll-out.

On the other hand, the vaccine roll-out was achingly slow, and the virtual stopping of any vaccines getting into WA has kicked the authorities into setting up major hubs which can vaccinate ~2000 per day, rather than drip-feeding ~100 doses per week into individual GP clinics; so we may soon end up overtaking where we would have been if the old system had continued.
Why were vaccines stopped getting in to WA?
Virtually stopped, I said. Small numbers of AZ (and even less Pfizer) were being brought in, but when the issues with AZ were discovered the advertising push for even the dribble in the GPs clinics was removed from the local paper and TV. We had a mini lockdown at about the same time, which didn't help, either. My local GP was the only one in the Perth CBD who got any vaccines, and they were getting 200 doses every fortnight so even though I was technically in at at-risk category I couldn't get a jab - they had far more deserving cases on their waiting list. You actually had a better chance of getting the vaccine outside of Perth.

It's only in the last couple of weeks that the vaccination rate in WA has got past 0.3% of the population per day (a rate which means it'll take 2 years to vaccinate everyone fully). But WA isn't particularly lagging behind other states - we're actually doing a bit better than Victoria and Queensland and are about on a par with NSW.

Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 2:54 am
by Chris Preston
The roll out has been hampered by a few things. One is the decision made by the states to deliver it through existing structures. A second was the unexpected hoarding of second doses by the states, particularly of the Pfizer vaccine. In hindsight, that should perhaps have been expected, but it clearly wasn't. Lack of availability was a problem early on.

The blood clot issues with the AZ vaccine have been holding people back as well. I have many friends who say they will wait and get the Pfizer vaccine later. Ironically, after getting my first AZ vaccine some weeks ago, it is now not recommended for me to get the AZ vaccine. Will have to see how that gets managed.

The community transmission and lockdown in Victoria has led to a huge surge in vaccinations.