That’s exactly right. Which made his comments today about it even more odd.
Hunt also made some odd comments. He described the decision to contract with AZ to be able to manufacture the vaccine on-shore as the most important decision of the pandemic, but also as “clearly the most difficult decision we had to make”.
Really? How on earth would that have been a difficult decision!!
Oh also - and there was a really interesting exchange where a number of journos were asking very pointed questions about recent Australian efforts to start up a contract with Moderna for their vaccine, and how the Aus govt haven’t been able to get a deal done. They were very specific questions that were just batted back as “we can’t answer that as it’s commercial in confidence”. But it didn’t fill me with confidence - if they are (unsuccessfully) trying to get another vaccine at this late stage then there must not be confidence in the ones we have secured.
Potential benefits in countries like UK - with hospitals, health workers under strain and realtively high death rates - are more tangible and deliver results in a shorter time frame.
For Australia, selling the benefits is more nuanced - longer term health of the general population and in particular health workers, plus avoidance of hospitalisation, freeing up beds for other treatments. It will still need surveillance testing in places such as Aged Care
Or…given the supply issues being encountered overseas for the Pfizer vaccine it may just be a case of trying to add Moderna’s mRNA vaccine to our mRNA approach.
What do you mean “or”? That’s exactly what I was saying. They’re trying to get access to another vaccine because they’re worried about supply issues with our current portfolio.
And that to me is concerning, especially given as they haven’t been able to get the deal done.
Moderna supply contracts with EU, UK, Japan and USA keep being amended and, in the case of the USA at least, USA has refused to release much information on the terms of the contract.
Perhaps Moderna does not have sufficient production capacity?
The urgency of countries to get people vaccinated is putting a lot of pressure on the whole process and making govts anxious over delays. The companies should sort it out but there’ll be hiccups along the way.
Moderna has been around for a decade and yet this is their first FDA-approved product. It’s no great surprise they’re floundering on the actual delivery bit.
Yep - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
It looks like COVID is hanging around for a while.
Australia doing pretty well, guess there will be some push back against vaccinations.
but can see benefits for health workers and aged care residents getting it first
Even I understand this.
Also, in the land of the free market, it is understood that the US has a clause that it can sequester supplies to prevent price gouging.
It could be that Moderna has FDA approval, but that its product is for private sale rather than via government.
Benefit to health care workers is that they remain healthy with infection, but they cannot work while infected.
As there is an unknown risk to the frail elderly, I would not see Aged Care residents as first cab off the rank. IIRC the upper age limit for the vax is 85yo.
I don’t see it that way.
I think he’s trying to get into as many vaccines as possible so if we need to ‘ramp up supplies’ to meet international vaccinations, we can.
Scomo would love to say we have vaccinated more people per capita than any other country in the world.
I think the goal of doing 15mil vaccinations between March and October would be met with a ‘but Israel do 3.5mil every month’ type response. Based on the Israel rates, we should be done in 4-5 months.
Edit…
We probably do see it the same way. I thought you were inferring that we’re not confident that the UK vaccine will work as well as originally expected.
Israel will be the case study into the effectiveness of the vaccine in the next few months, seeing as they will be fully vaccinated by April - The early signs seem promising.
I struggle to understand how a resident/citizen can catch COVID in quarantine - I understand there is a minute possibility of staff catching it but it has me beat how a quarantined person can catch it from another quarantined person.
Ventilation a hypothesis for Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland.
Not sure whether it was addressed in Melbourne
If we wanted to use it this year or next we needed to start the construction process 5 years ago.
Apparently it’s a year to the day where Australia recorded its first covid case.
Unhappy anniversary I guess. 