The COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Australia has begun

[Oneworldplus2]

South Australia's excuse for having the lowest percentage of usage of supplied vaccines? We received too many! Of course we still have GP's desperate for more vaccines than the 50 a week they are getting. SA Govt's reasoning? We don't want to swamp them with vaccines so they can't do their core GP business. Honestly, you can't dream this stuff up.

Get help from the military - roll it out 24/7 on a footy oval/drive through movie theatre.

Maybe l should do some consulting like Mckinsky Group and charge out at $47k per day...

 

[Must...Fly!]

Get help from the military - roll it out 24/7 on a footy oval/drive through movie theatre.

Maybe l should do some consulting like Mckinsky Group and charge out at $47k per day...

Who's going to go and get a vaccine at 3am for something that isn't a danger to them

I will get the vaccine as soon as possible but you can't just assume everyone wants one and will do anything for one. Again we are (fortunately) victims of our own success!

 

[Pushka]

Who's going to go and get a vaccine at 3am for something that isn't a danger to them

I will get the vaccine as soon as possible but you can't just assume everyone wants one and will do anything for one. Again we are (fortunately) victims of our own success!

Yes that’s true. And with Hunts proclamation of no travel then really there’s no point in getting it now, is there.

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Who's going to go and get a vaccine at 3am for something that isn't a danger to them

So we shouldn't try it? Ok

 

[Lynda2475]

24 hour mass vacinations centres not needed, but there is huge value in mass vaccination centres with extended hours over GPs for many younger people who need to go outside of business hours. Most GP hours arent very compatible with the availablity of those who have full time jobs, not all employers will give staff paid time off to go to a GP.

By the time phase 2 starts there needs to not only be mass vaccination centres for Pfizer, but also the consideration of workplace schemes for AZ/Novovax like they use for the flu vaccine.

US and UK are powering through roll-out because they leverage mass vaccination centres efffectively in metro areas.

 

[RAM]

Yes their experience at running population wide vaccination programs would be wonderful to leverage....

Sounds like you're using a 'smirk & mirrors' line there! They don't hold hoses either!

Just as the defence forces were finally allowed to assist in the logistics & communications management for fighting the bushfires as well as operating over a hundred of their engineers' heavy vehicles for clearing fire trails etc, or managing the medical mobile surgical hospitals after the Tsunami, or countless other recent examples - logistics is the main business of any defence force.

If the guns & bullets don't arrive before time then the battle is lost.

Something that seems to evade too many. A bit like if the vaccines don't arrive...

If may come as news but in the UK & US - the defence forces are a key component of their vaccination program (logistics control & delivery in a number of cases). The same in NZ.

However, the Australian Defence Forces don't make major donations of course.

 

[RAM]

Have they also come clean and admitted that 3/4of the contracted Pfizer dosages simply haven’t arrived? Have they confessed that that might have something to do with the slower than planned roll out?

When they admit those things, then maybe we will have the full story.

The Federal Govt has an indicative list of how many will be delivered each week for the 1st contract. They just are not sharing it.

The NZ Govt revealed this a few weeks back in an explanation about why they had not revealed a detailed timeline for all vaccinations other than the first 4 stages. If NZ has a list then Australia has a similar list. Perhaps the reason it is not being disclosed is that NZ is receiving their 1st contract at a little over 3x the rate that Australia is for its contracted amount. NZ signed their contract some weeks before Australia.

It would be somewhat of a free-shot if the Federal Govt admitted this. No pun intended.

Something that has not been mentioned is the delay in CSL fulfilling its promised output - they began making the AZ vaccine last November & were supposed to be delivering 1 million doses/week by late March. However they did not expand their 'bottling' capacity amongst other issues. If they'd kept to their 'contracted' timeframe then there would be over 4 million domestically produced doses with 3 million available for injection as of last week (after testing completed) on top of the 700,000 doses already received from the UK and adding 1 million doses per week. Add in the Pfizer doses and that would have made 4.7 million doses by last Friday vs around 1.1m injected.

Due to the bottling issues the CSL figures are around 2.3 million available and 4.0 million doses (CSL + UK + Pfizer) vs 1.1m actually injected

Supply is not the issue - incompetent planning is. Remember the first week target & second week targets using the first arrival of Pfizer (on Feb 15th) were missed by around the same margin of 75% missed.

Given that the Federal Govt was supposed to be receiving around 135k Pfizer a week & 1 million CSL/week - for the last 4 weeks then for just 200,000 injections/week over the last two weeks really highlights the failings. I really hope they have enough freezer space to store this rapidly growing stockpile.

 

[RAM]

Australia is actually trending far below the incidence rate of clots which is amazingly good news!

The figures being bandied around are more spin than substance - they do not stand up to scrutiny.

Comparing the 'incidence in the general population per annum' against the 'number of hospital admissions in the last 3 weeks' is dishonest at best.

1. The AZ vaccine has only been administered since March 8th. So just over a month ago.
2. The appearance is between 4 and 20 days after the injection.
3. Counting back 20 days from April 14th takes you to March 25th - so only 17 days of AZ vaccinations done.
4. The number of AZ doses administered in the first two weeks were quite low (as widely reported).
5. So the time weighted average number of doses injected is under 200,000 at most.
6. The correct comparison is not 'incidence in the general population per annum (normally) but 'hospitalisations in the general population normally divided by 16 (so for 3.25 weeks) to convert it to the same timeframe. Only a small proportion of 'incidences' require hospitalisation. On this basis it would look approximately like 1.5 cases/million then divided by 16 = 0.09 cases per million vs 2 cases (discovered so far) out of 200,000 injections.
7. Converting to cases per million the comparison is something like 10 cases from AZ vs 0.09 cases normally or around 106x higher.
8. That is not the end of the issue though. The AZ cases are seemingly only occuring in a subset of the general population.
9. Doing the simple male/female split (as virtually all cases are in females) then the risk factor is 200 x greater.
10. But the age range of AZ cases is under 56 (from what I can see from European & UK info) - which make the risk factor for <56 yr old women around 290x greater than 'incidence in the general population normally'.

• Has anyone asked why the Federal Govt (I may be wrong and missed them) does not detail how many Pfizer & how many AZ shots have been distributed for injection, and then how many have been injected? Perhaps that would reveal some 'inconvenient data'. For example in an earlier post I listed the weekly arrivals of the Pfizer vaccine. Added in the AZ vaccine arrivals, allowed for the delay in testing & approval (as detailed) and it illustrated that the rollout had more than 1 million vaccines available for distribution than injected - yet several major listed groups (one with over 350 facilities in Aged & disability care Australia-wide) as of last Friday had still not had a single resident let alone staff member vaccinated.

Now that this is all going to be covered by 'National Cabinet' all figures, documents & discussions will be embargoed - no public access. The Australian public will only be shown what we 'need to see'.

Smoke & mirrors.

 

[jakeseven7]

The figures being bandied around are more spin than substance - they do not stand up to scrutiny.

Comparing the 'incidence in the general population per annum' against the 'number of hospital admissions in the last 3 weeks' is dishonest at best.

1. The AZ vaccine has only been administered since March 8th. So just over a month ago.
2. The appearance is between 4 and 20 days after the injection.
3. Counting back 20 days from April 14th takes you to March 25th - so only 17 days of AZ vaccinations done.
4. The number of AZ doses administered in the first two weeks were quite low (as widely reported).
5. So the time weighted average number of doses injected is under 200,000 at most.
6. The correct comparison is not 'incidence in the general population per annum (normally) but 'hospitalisations in the general population normally divided by 16 (so for 3.25 weeks) to convert it to the same timeframe. Only a small proportion of 'incidences' require hospitalisation. On this basis it would look approximately like 1.5 cases/million then divided by 16 = 0.09 cases per million vs 2 cases (discovered so far) out of 200,000 injections.
7. Converting to cases per million the comparison is something like 10 cases from AZ vs 0.09 cases normally or around 106x higher.
8. That is not the end of the issue though. The AZ cases are seemingly only occuring in a subset of the general population.
9. Doing the simple male/female split (as virtually all cases are in females) then the risk factor is 200 x greater.
10. But the age range of AZ cases is under 56 (from what I can see from European & UK info) - which make the risk factor for <56 yr old women around 290x greater than 'incidence in the general population normally'.

• Has anyone asked why the Federal Govt (I may be wrong and missed them) does not detail how many Pfizer & how many AZ shots have been distributed for injection, and then how many have been injected? Perhaps that would reveal some 'inconvenient data'. For example in an earlier post I listed the weekly arrivals of the Pfizer vaccine. Added in the AZ vaccine arrivals, allowed for the delay in testing & approval (as detailed) and it illustrated that the rollout had more than 1 million vaccines available for distribution than injected - yet several major listed groups (one with over 350 facilities in Aged & disability care Australia-wide) as of last Friday had still not had a single resident let alone staff member vaccinated.

Now that this is all going to be covered by 'National Cabinet' all figures, documents & discussions will be embargoed - no public access. The Australian public will only be shown what we 'need to see'.

Smoke & mirrors.

No smoke and mirrors it’s just you changing the topic and posting large slabs of unrelated texts, per normal.

There is no over representation because... there isn’t.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Master FM (San Francisco) will be getting vaccinated tomorrow. Feeling very left out . Dr FM (34) fully vaccinated with Pfizer. Ms FM (29) and husband (31) first AZ jab. Master FM (32) about to be vaccinated. Mr FM and I (68 and nearly 69) not even on the radar.......

 

[tgh]

IF you give me the ten years , you can have my jab now…..

 

[Flying mermaid]

IF you give me the ten years , you can have my jab now…..

Called my bluff - I would rather have the 10 years

 

[RooFlyer]

No smoke and mirrors it’s just you changing the topic and posting large slabs of unrelated texts, per normal.

... not to mention addressing a point about lack of past deliveries with one about a list of possible future deliveries ...

 

[Seat0B]

With Australia’s delayed vaccine rollout, a reunion with my parents overseas inches further from reach | Jill Stark

I appreciate my good fortune to be healthy and have a job but I live with the very real grief that a part of me is missing

www.theguardian.com

"The human brain is hardwired to crave certainty. We can survive almost anything if we know it has an endpoint.
I’d been holding on, banking on the vaccination rollout as a glimmer of hope that perhaps we could be reunited at the back end of this year.
But on Thursday, as I watched the prime minister announce the AstraZeneca vaccine – which was to be the cornerstone of Australia’s immunisation program – would not be recommended for anyone under the age of 50, I broke down....

Pre-Covid, I was always comforted by the knowledge that a family reunion was only 24 hours away. How naive it now seems to take our freedom of movement for granted.
Technology has helped bridge the gap but some things can’t be replicated. The video calls that once sustained me now feel like a cruel and hollow imitation of intimacy. I just want to hug my mum and dad.
The prime minister and his health officials keep saying the vaccination program is going slowly because “we’re not on a burning platform”.
But for those of us separated from family overseas it certainly feels like it"

This author has captured exactly how downcast I feel about the way our vaccine rollout is proceeding and the border lock down with no end in sight. Only in my case, substitute 'hug my son' for 'hug my mum and dad'. And I was a bit surprised to hear someone else say that video calls are actually a torture rather than a succour, which is how I have been feeling for quite a while. Most of my friends keeps saying, in a well meaning way "oh well at least you can talk to him now and then" - but that actually makes me feel much worse and highlights what I'm missing. I often cry for a few minutes after a video call or even a phone call. And in my case, its not even a given that a video call is possible given government control of internet and the banning/blocking of various video calling platforms and VPN providers in the country where my son lives. At least we have the internet .

 

[Pushka]

With Australia’s delayed vaccine rollout, a reunion with my parents overseas inches further from reach | Jill Stark

I appreciate my good fortune to be healthy and have a job but I live with the very real grief that a part of me is missing

www.theguardian.com

"The human brain is hardwired to crave certainty. We can survive almost anything if we know it has an endpoint.
I’d been holding on, banking on the vaccination rollout as a glimmer of hope that perhaps we could be reunited at the back end of this year.
But on Thursday, as I watched the prime minister announce the AstraZeneca vaccine – which was to be the cornerstone of Australia’s immunisation program – would not be recommended for anyone under the age of 50, I broke down....

Pre-Covid, I was always comforted by the knowledge that a family reunion was only 24 hours away. How naive it now seems to take our freedom of movement for granted.
Technology has helped bridge the gap but some things can’t be replicated. The video calls that once sustained me now feel like a cruel and hollow imitation of intimacy. I just want to hug my mum and dad.
The prime minister and his health officials keep saying the vaccination program is going slowly because “we’re not on a burning platform”.
But for those of us separated from family overseas it certainly feels like it"

This author has captured exactly how downcast I feel about the way our vaccine rollout is proceeding and the border lock down with no end in sight. Only in my case, substitute 'hug my son' for 'hug my mum and dad'. And I was a bit surprised to hear someone else say that video calls are actually a torture rather than a succour, which is how I have been feeling for quite a while. Most of my friends keeps saying, in a well meaning way "oh well at least you can talk to him now and then" - but that actually makes me feel much worse and highlights what I'm missing. I often cry for a few minutes after a video call or even a phone call. And in my case, its not even a given that a video call is possible given government control of internet and the banning/blocking of various video calling platforms and VPN providers in the country where my son lives. At least we have the internet .

You know you aren’t alone here.

Yesterday in UK my son and partner travelled to see his partners parents in Kent. Even though they live in the same country she hadn’t seen them in a year as being older they were in full lockdown.

It will get better.

Do you have any business overseas?

 

[Seat0B]

You know you aren’t alone here.

Yesterday in UK my son and partner travelled to see his partners parents in Kent. Even though they live in the same country she hadn’t seen them in a year as being older they were in full lockdown.

It will get better.

Do you have any business overseas?

Not any more!

pre COVID I had business in UK and around various places in Asia, but that's all dormant now. None of it was essential - training and advisory in sustainable procurement processes. So for most of the governments involved, it is low priority now. Most of my UK work has dried up because the clients were in the 55+ age group and many have COVID-retired (pretty much like me). My work depends a lot on word of mouth and personal referral, and is discretionary, so it's hard to maintain or grow the network of new clients/people's replacements without some lead time warning of events like retirements, and without face to face meetings.

And I do know I'm not alone, thank you so very much . It is sad that I find help from other people being in the same miserable position, but there you go...

 

[Flying mermaid]

Not any more!

pre COVID I had business in UK and around various places in Asia, but that's all dormant now. None of it was essential - training and advisory in sustainable procurement processes. So for most of the governments involved, it is low priority now. Most of my UK work has dried up because the clients were in the 55+ age group and many have COVID-retired (pretty much like me). My work depends a lot on word of mouth and personal referral, and is discretionary, so it's hard to maintain or grow the network of new clients/people's replacements without some lead time warning of events like retirements, and without face to face meetings.

And I do know I'm not alone, thank you so very much . It is sad that I find help from other people being in the same miserable position, but there you go...

You do sound as though you are in a worse position than many of us. We were separated from Dr FM for nearly a year but she is back now and visiting us in a weeks time. We haven’t seen Master FM since December 2019 - he was supposed to visit in Easter 2020 to meet his little niece, but obviously that couldn’t happen. However now he is being vaccinated, there is a strong possibility he will come to Australia in July. So hang in there - it is slowly getting better and families reuniting.

 

[RAM]

... not to mention addressing a point about lack of past deliveries with one about a list of possible future deliveries ...

View attachment 245133

My post was about the Fed Govt saying that lack of supply & uncertainty of supply - not their, & highly paid consultants, incompetence. There has been virtually no uncertainty about the Pfizer delivery dates nor around 97% of the weekly amount.

They have been arriving as scheduled on a weekly SIA flight that then goes on to NZ to deliver their doses.

Phase 1A is all Pfizer based remember. So not meeting those targets has nothing do with any 'AZ vaccine supply issues'.

So if not due to vaccine supply, perhaps it is a lack of supply of a different vital component - see article link at end.

I addressed the past deliveries in earlier posts. Brief summary.

9 weekly deliveries of Pfizer received by Australia starting on Feb 15th, 8 are/were available for injection - totalling over 1 million doses by last Friday.
2 UK deliveries of just over 700,000 AZ available for injection before end of March.

Around 2.3m CSL produced AZ doses available for injection before last Friday. Another week's production about to be signed off (or may have just been done so).

So as of last Friday there were 4m doses that could be in peoples' arms - just around 1.1m ended up in arms in the 7 weeks the Phase 1A has been going until then.

However, that 1.1m doses now injected consists almost as many AZ injections as Pfizer despite AZ only going for half the time (Great work & thank you GPs!)

Phase 1A totalled Q & border workers (70k), Frontline health care priority sub-groups (100k), Aged & Disability Care residents (190k) and Aged & Disability Care workers ((318k). Total 678,000 people.

Govt does not appear to be providing break-up of Pfizer doses distributed nor delivered from AZ doses.

But adding up cleared/approved weekly Pfizer arrivals gave over 1m doses available for arms - enough for ALL Priority 1A to receive 1st dose & nearly half their second.

Yet, the situation is that Aged & Diability Care residents still remain outstanding in large numbers. One national chain alone (>350 facilities Australia-wide so this is not a 'State-based' issue) has not even been given dates for residents let alone workers to get their 1st injection (as of late last week). Several other 'chains' reported likewise.

In NSW last week an email was sent out to all 5th & 6th Yr Med students, admitting they had mostly been missed despite being in Priority 1A, telling them to immediately contact a GP to get AZ. This was sent out two days before the 'change'. The email, part of which I posted included a 'don't feel so bad' throwaway comment that many VMOs and JMOs had similarly not been scheduled an appointment yet either.

As of Saturday an entire clinical team, at one major Sydney hospital, who are as close to CV facing as you can be without being at a 'hot hotel' still have not been scheduled an appointment. Oddly enough though many non-ward based administrators have already had their 2nd dose.

Perhaps it is time to do what Germany had begun to do & investigate who is 'jumping the queues' and prosecuting them publicly?

It seems that one major real reason for the delayed rollout may be due to the Federal Govt not ordering the small single-use syringes early enough (sound familar - perhaps also understocked in the National stockpile along with how most types of PPE were?). This was commented on pre-vaccine program starting but the Health Minister assured us that they would indeed arrive very shortly, hopefully before Xmas?

Coronavirus: Australia's COVID vaccine supply at risk due to ...​

https://www.smh.com.au › ... › Coronavirus pandemic

18 Feb 2021 — Syringes designed to extract the maximum amount of doses from ... A sixth of Australia's vaccine supply at risk due to syringe shortage.

Silence ever since, no big announcement that they'd arrived.

Then this came out today:
COVID-19 vaccine rollout out: Sydney doctors not given syringes

The country’s vaccination rollout fiasco appears to be going from bad to worse with GPs across Sydney receiving hundreds of doses but no syringes to administer them.

No Cookies | Daily Telegraph

No Cookies

www.dailytelegraph.com.au

“I’ve been trying to get through to COVID support regarding this and response is they are on back order.

“We are to use our own. But these supplies are very expensive and the expectation that we will be using 100 per week of our own supply is simply not sustainable.”

Dr Ann Allsop, of General Practice Cremorne, said she had the same experience.

“It’s pretty poor that we’re expected to wear the shortfall in supply. With the first or second deliveries we can cope. But if it continues that’s unreasonable.”

Dr Charlotte Hespe, who practices in Glebe, said she had heard the Department of Health had simply “ran out”.

 

[Lynda2475]

The shortage of special syringes needed for the Pfizer shots was known from the get go, and is one reason we dont always get the full 6 doses from each vial, leading to unnecessary wastage. If there is now a shortage of regular syringes too someone has to ask why government did not secure supply with a local manufacturer knowing there would be global competition for imports.

Whilst there may have been uncertainty re vaccine effectiveness and supply, the need for syringes was not at all unknown, they knew we'd need 50+ million syringes to vaccinate 25 Million people this year. Syringes don't require special storage so we could have started stockpiling well in advance of vaccine availability.

 

[DC3]

Some mis-information appearing in this thread. Most likely unintentional, but stated as factual. Am I one of the few who have noticed?

Edited