RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

In the past month, over 50 million people around the world have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Archival Tape -- Reporter:

“Millions of people in England aged 70 and over and those with medical conditions which make them extremely vulnerable towards COVID-19 will be invited for vaccination from today.”

RUBY:

Last year our leaders here in Australia told us we were told we were first in line.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“We're here today to announce that we have signed a letter of intent with AstraZeneca, which will enable…”

RUBY:

And that the government had secured enough doses of different versions of the vaccine to ensure we would all be inoculated.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“Now, today, we're announcing an extra one and a half billion dollar investment in the Novavax and the Pfizer vaccines.”

RUBY:

But high global demand, delays in shipments from overseas and debate over the efficacy of different vaccines has brought doubt into the process.

Archival Tape -- Reporter:

“The federal government is facing fresh criticism over the covid vaccine with labor claiming it hasn’t secured enough deals.”

RUBY:

While the federal government claims it’s on track to roll out the first vaccines in the middle of February…

There are concerns from state governments and healthcare workers, those ultimately responsible for delivering the vaccine program, that things aren’t going as smoothly as planned.

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton on when Australians can expect to be vaccinated, and if it’s happening fast enough.

Rick, let’s start by talking about the logistics of the vaccine rollout here in Australia. What is the plan?

RICK:

Yes. So about 680,000 people will be getting vaccinated in what they call phase 1A. So that begins in mid to late February. We don't know the exact start date yet for the very first vaccination.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“After considerable effort, including with our vaccine suppliers, we are now in a position where we believe we'll be able to commence vaccinations of high priority groups in mid to late February.”

RICK:

And hopefully most of those people will be getting the Pfizer vaccine, although it's not entirely clear exactly who's going to be getting what. But in that first phase, we've got quarantine workers, we've got real frontline health workers.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“Those populations in that first phase are quarantine and border workers, front line health officials, as well as those working in aged care and disability care..”

RICK:

So like, you know, nurses who are in there on the wards who are having to like, you know, turn patients over and things like that. Plus, you've got aged care and disability workers and residents of people in institutions. So really, if you had to say what the most vulnerable people are in the country, that's what phase 1A is.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“It is not just one shot here, it's a two shot process. And that has to be managed particularly for the priority populations.”

RICK:

And then we move to phase 1B now, this is where it gets a little bit tricky because there's about six million people in phase 1B, and that includes the rest of the medical and health care community. It includes elderly people aged 70 over, and it includes people aged 55 and over if they’re Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. It also includes emergency services workers like police. That includes teachers. It includes meat processing workers because they're considered critical to the economy.

But there's not enough of the Pfizer vaccine to do all of the people in phase 1A and 1B, we've got 10 million doses. That's five million people. And there's about almost seven million people in both of those groups.

We're also, you know, in a little bit of a tough spot because we've got more doses now of AstraZeneca and what looks like not enough doses of Pfizer vaccine, which is on the face a bit more efficacious as a vaccine than the AstraZeneca drug.

RUBY:

Mm. OK, so we're getting a small amount of Pfizer vaccine, but the main vaccine that will be used here in Australia is the AstraZeneca. Can you tell me what the major difference is between the two?

RICK:

Yeah, so if you look at the headline figures, the major difference is that AstraZeneca, it's also a two dose vaccine, just like Pfizer, but it has an efficacy rate of about 70 percent after two doses. So that means of all of the people in their study, in their clinical trials, 70 percent were prevented from developing Covid-19 symptoms.

Now, Pfizer on, you know, prima facie is a better vaccine because it has a 95 percent effectiveness in its published research studies. There is also a difference in the cost per unit, especially for Australia. So for AstraZeneca, the cost of the vaccine is just over three dollars Australian, compared with twenty six dollars per unit for the Pfizer drug.

RUBY:

That's quite a difference.

RICK:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if it's lunch money, it's a big difference between what you can buy at the canteen, right. The other benefit I guess, and this would have been a consideration in the deal making around what vaccines Australia gets, is that Pfizer's very difficult to manufacture because it's a completely new vaccine platform and you would have to build completely new facilities. AstraZeneca, we are actually manufacturing that in Australia. They're making 30 million doses at the CSL plasma facility in Broadmeadows in Victoria.

So we can manufacture it and in a sense, guarantee some of their own supply.
And it's also easier because it only needs to be stored at about four degrees Celsius from memory, whereas Pfizer needs to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius.

RUBY:

Hmm mm ok, so there are some practical considerations then in terms of the costs and also the ability to transport and to manufacture. But I just want to come back to to the efficacy here, because if the Pfizer vaccine is so much more effective than the AstraZeneca one, how is it that we have ended up with the AstraZeneca option? Is it just that we were too late to get into the queue for the Pfizer vaccine?

RICK:

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of detail coming from the federal government about when negotiations were entered into for different types of drugs. AstraZeneca, certainly early on, looked to be one of the most promising vaccines. But for example, I asked the Department of Health this week, when did we enter negotiations for the Pfizer drug? When did we become aware that Pfizer's was available for deal making, for securing supply? And they responded with a bit of a copout. They said, sorry, any further details are commercial in confidence.

Now, obviously, I find it very hard to believe that asking when we enquired of a drug is a commercial matter. I think there are valid criticisms to be made here about the pool of drugs that we have. And certainly, you know, Labor's health spokesman Chris Bowen said that the Coalition were late to the table and did not sufficiently hedge their bets.

Archival Tape -- Chris Bowen:

“The first deal around the world was done in March. We didn't get a deal until September. So we're really behind the eight ball. And now it's very difficult for the government to catch up because these companies are very strongly committed around the world”

RICK:

You know, he's not knocking AstraZeneca as a vaccine or saying it's worse than Pfizer. But he was writing OpEds in July saying, where are we?

Archival Tape --

“So, yes. And the government said, well, the first in the queue, which was nonsense. It was nonsense then and it's nonsense now.”

RICK:

Because on the face of it, that's just not true. We can't get more Pfizer vaccine. We got 10 million doses, which it sounds like we were lucky to get. And there's nothing more on offer any time soon. They're at capacity.

We're left in a position now where people are starting to wonder whether we might have made a couple of errors along the way in terms of hedging their bets on what vaccines will work or whether we've even got enough of the right mix of vaccines to get herd immunity in Australia and to re-open the economy.

RUBY:

We'll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Rick, the vaccines that are rolling out across the world, and that we’re hopefully going to start receiving here in Australia next month… How exactly do they work? Do they stop people from catching Covid-19?

RICK:

Well, if you get Covid-19 around the world, what we've seen, you know, more than a million people have died. We're having, you know, historic death rates per day in the UK. The USA is breaking all sorts of records. So the very first and most important thing you want from a vaccine is to stop people dying. So what these clinical studies for Pfizer and AstraZeneca and all of the others test for first is, will this vaccine stop you from catching or getting the worst of Covid-19 symptoms? Because that means we can protect lives.

Secondary to that is a different question, and it is can we stop people giving Covid-19 to other people? So just because we stop you dying from it doesn't mean we stop you giving it to the nurse that treats you to the doctors that come into the ICU. And it certainly doesn't mean that we stop you developing an asymptomatic version of Covid-19.

And that's important because, you know, we saw in Queensland over summer that, you know, they locked down all of greater Brisbane because a cleaner was infectious for five days before testing positive to Coronavirus. And they thought that there was an even more wicked strain of this thing, a UK variant out in the community. So transmission is a different question, but it's still one that we don't know the answer to because the clinical studies were first and foremost focused on saving lives.

RUBY:

Right, so with these vaccines, the way it works is a person who has been vaccinated could still catch Covid-19, but they wouldn’t develop any of the symptoms. So what about whether these vaccines can stop the virus from being transmitted? Is that the next step?

RICK:

Yes. And, you know, that was always going to be the follow up because that is the next most pressing concern. And different vaccines offer different benefits, which is also why it's good to have a mix. But now we're starting to look at, OK, so if they protect lives good, and some may be better at protecting against more serious infections, then how now do they work when it comes to asymptomatic cases? Because you're not going to die if you're asymptomatic, but you will pass that on, particularly if you don't know you've got it. So that's what we want to work on now.

Now, how do we, you know, really bring down what they call the R-naught value of this virus and bring it down so we can actually you know, it may be very difficult now to eradicate Covid-19 even in years to come - like the flu. But, you know, how do we get it to a point where we can live with it?

RUBY:

Mm, I guess that is the question that everyone wants answered, whether or not this vaccine will let us be able to return to what life was like before covid-19. You know, people want to know if they'll be able to travel or go to big events and that sort of thing.

RICK:

Yeah, so do I. I want to know as well. And we don't know. Certainly it doesn't look like there will be any international travel or certainly no regular international travel this year and possibly not for the first quarter of next year, 2022 either. It's not just saying, okay, we vaccinate 75 percent of everyone. Bob's your uncle. What they're actually looking at is what they call these kind of intensity of transmission hotspots.

So they know, for example, that kids are a lot more touchy feely and they're at more risk of kind of spreading germs, essentially. And there are public transport workers and people who are out in the community more often. And so if it actually works or turns out to be the case that these vaccines do slow transmission or stop transmission, then we may actually end up pivoting our entire vaccine strategy as a nation and vaccinating the most social people first, which is something that has now come up in the United Kingdom where they've also raised the same idea. And that would be another way of protecting the most vulnerable if we can stop or eradicate this disease.

RUBY:

And Rick, is only a matter of weeks until we start to see vaccinations happening here in Australia. And while the federal government is responsible for purchasing these vaccines, they will actually be rolled out at the state level and they'll be administered by health care workers on the ground. So are things expected to go smoothly? What are you hearing?

RICK:

Well, I'm hearing some tensions at the moment. I genuinely hope they will be ironed out because, you know, it’s in no one's interest for this programme to explode.

Essentially what's happened is that, you know, the federal government has bought the vaccines that we've got and now it's up to the states to go through the details and make sure the logistics are right, and the federal government made that very clear. The federal government will be responsible for GP clinics and things like that, but states run the hospital system.

And certainly there are some ministers and senior government officials in different states, particularly Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales, who are worried about the lack of bedded down information. Right now, they're just a little bit in the dark and they don't like that. They like knowing what's going to happen when. And also we're seeing cases in, you know, local hospital districts in Queensland where it's emerged that some doctors won't be in the first round, like ear, nose and throat doctors and anaesthetists and they're not happy about that.

And also clinicians who are demanding that they want the Pfizer vaccine and not the AstraZeneca one and the government said, and it has been reported that some health officials will be getting the AstraZeneca vaccine, you know, these are doctors, they're smart. They read everything. They read the scientific papers and the journals. And they're also loud because they know what vaccine is best for them. And some of them don't want the AstraZeneca one.

I do need to say there's nothing wrong with the AstraZeneca shot. It's safe. It's 70 percent effective. It may stop transmission in, you know, 59 percent, 58 percent of cases. Pfizer might as well for all we know, we just don't know yet. And, you know, we're not in the same position that the US and the UK are. And I think we should be lucky that we're in a position where we actually don't need to worry as much about the upfront effectiveness number or the efficacious number of these vaccines.

And, you know, we do need to vaccinate the whole world. We need to vaccinate everyone, it's a matter of making sure other countries are safe and protected, not just for, you know, our moral obligations, but so we can reopen those borders and make sure that we're not worried about infections getting back into Australia.

RUBY:

Rick, thank you so much for your time today. It's really nice talking to you again.

RICK:

Thanks, Ruby. It's been nice to start the year off with your dulcet tones.

RUBY:

Hahaha, you charmer.

RICK:

I try.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Thousands of people marched in cities across Australia on Monday, protesting against January 26 celebrations and calling for racial justice.

Archival Tape --

“And there will be no peace because there is no justice here in this country for first nations people”

RUBY:

Police in Melbourne and Sydney had warned protesters against organising large gatherings, but in both cities rallies went ahead.

Archival Tape --

“We are here and our numbers are growing year in and year out!

Always was, always will be aboriginal land!”

RUBY:

And in the US former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is set to get underway after the articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate.

It will be the first time a former president is tried in the Senate.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.