CANBERRA, Jan 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Australia’s medical regulator has provisionally approved the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use in the country.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the country’s medical regulator, announced this morning, the Pfizer vaccine met safety, efficacy and quality standards and has been approved for people aged 16 and older.
It is the first vaccine to be approved for use in Australia.
The decision was welcomed by Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, today, when he attended the press conference.
“Our priority has always been to keep Australians safe and protect lives and livelihoods,” he said.
“Today’s approval is another big step forward for our community, particularly in the protection of our most vulnerable people.”
Australians will receive two doses of the Pfizer vaccine at least 21 days apart.
The government is now planning to begin vaccinations in late Feb – slightly later than the mid-Feb start date it had previously announced, as a result of shipment and production delays, with healthcare workers and the elderly to be given priority access.
In Australia the vaccine will be rolled out in five phases over the coming months and, over time, will involve more than 1,000 vaccination administration sites.
Greg Hunt, the minister for health, said that the TGA had “placed safety above all else” during the approval process.
“This approval and the upcoming rollout of the vaccine will play an important part in our ability to manage the pandemic in 2021,” he said.
The Australian government purchased 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, enough to inoculate five million people and more than 53 million doses developed by University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which must pass TGA’s assessment and approval processes.
Today’s announcement came about one year since Australia confirmed its first case of COVID-19.
According to the latest figures, updated last night from the Department of Health, Australia had 28,766 confirmed cases, 130 of which remain active, and 909 deaths, most of which were in aged care facilities in Victoria, during the state’s devastating second wave of infections.
Despite Australia’s relative success in preventing the spread of the virus, Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Paul Kelly, said, Australians would have to learn to live with the virus. “We will control it more this year than we did last year,” he said.
“But we’re going to have to learn to live with this virus. I don’t think it’s going to be completely eradicated anytime soon,” he concluded.– NNN-AGENCIES
