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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has defended Australia’s coronavirus vaccine rollout, saying there is “no holdup”, even after the government has been forced to reconsider some jab goals it set earlier in the year.
Mr Morrison said the reason Australia was behind its vaccination schedule was because international suppliers hadn’t delivered as promised.
The government said in January it aimed to have four million people vaccinated by the end of March but only managed to inoculate about 670,000 at the start of this month.
“The simple explanation of that is three million – 3.1 million vaccines – that never came to Australia. That is the reason,” Mr Morrison told reporters on Tuesday.
“In early January, we anticipated we would have the 3.1 million vaccines. Those vaccines were not supplied to Australia, and that explains the difference … and we made that very clear back in February.”
As for Australia’s own production of vaccine doses, Mr Morrison said experts would take their time making sure they were safe.
“There is no holdup. The release of vaccines has always been based on them completing those processes, so the fact that they actually have to get approved by the relevant authorities and do the batch testing is not a holdup,” he said.
“It is a necessary part of the process to guarantee Australian safety, so to describe it as a holdup would be incorrect.”
More to come.
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