Finally: The Australian government have secured another one million doses of the Pfizer vaccine from Poland, prioritising young people in Sydney hotspot areas.
The Pfizer vaccines will be arriving from Warsaw tonight, after weeks of negotiations with the Polish government, as reported by the ABC.
“We have been in discussions with the Polish government now for several weeks, and we have secured an additional 1 million doses of Pfizer and they will start landing in Australia tonight,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at a press conference today.
530,000 of those Pfizer vaccines will be put aside for 20-39 year olds living in one of the 12 Greater Sydney hotspot LGAs. Scott Morrison said this decision is based on advice from the Chief Health Medical Officer and Doherty Institute modelling, which identified the age group as “peak transmitters of COVID-19.”
“Those younger people are the ones who are going out and working on disability homes, aged care homes, childcare, logistics, freight,” NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said.
“And so this will be an intense effort to get one dose of vaccine into that group as quickly as possible.”
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian also agreed that young people should be a priority.
“They are the ones that are mobile because of their work. They are the ones who cross three generations, and they are ones who were part of the 70 per cent of cases we are currently experiencing in those most problematic areas,” she said.
Of that one million, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said he believed that Victorians would receive 175,000 Pfizer doses from the delivery.
“The fact of the matter is, the greatest need is in Sydney,” Andrews said.
“I voiced support of those who are in the greatest need getting the greatest support. Could we have a long debate about why Sydney is in the position it is in? I am not going to do that.”
According to The Guardian, this current shipment originally comes from the Pfizer plant in Belgium and will be batch tested in Australia first.
