Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison has expressed regret for declaring the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was “not a race” when the program has fallen behind schedule, as he promised to make up lost ground. Mr Morrison revealed he had repeatedly asked the nation’s peak medical experts to review their advice on the AstraZeneca vaccine to accelerate the program.
The remarks came after NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she had gone “blue in the face” on the need for urgency with vaccine supplies, while Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews warned earlier in the week that millions of people wanted a jab but were being forced to wait.
Mr Morrison said the rollout was two months behind schedule and said he was making a “constant appeal” to the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation to get it to review its conclusion that AstraZeneca was not recommended for people under the age of 60.
Asked why the government did not say “sorry” to Australians about the rollout, Mr Morrison told reporters that no country had got its pandemic response 100 per cent right.
Victoria has recorded its highest number of new daily
22 cases linked to current outbreaks, finally takes the total number of cases associated with the outbreak to 107 in the past nine days. Victoria set a new state record with 57,519 tests returned in the previous 24 hours. Victoria has recorded its highest number of new daily Covid-19 cases in 10 months, with 22 new cases reported on Wednesday.
While it is the highest number of new cases since late 2020, the state’s health minister, Martin Foley, expressed optimism that Victoria was getting ahead of the outbreak due to the large number of contacts isolating and lockdown having an impact.
Foley said the state government’s decision to isolate the secondary contacts of primary close contacts of Covid-19 cases was paying off, with half of the new infections reported on Wednesday being household contacts of primary close contacts.
Over 18,000 primary close contacts and over 10,000 secondary close contacts are currently isolating across the state.
“If Victoria wasn’t managing those secondary close contacts as tightly as we are now, the advice that we have is that this virus would have got beyond us already. It has not,” Foley said.
The health minister said he was increasingly confident Victoria was on top of the outbreak.
Financial help to industry
The state’s industry support minister, Martin Pakula, also announced a further $282.5m in cash grants for businesses affected by Victoria’s latest lockdown, bringing the total support to $484m for this lockdown, and close to $1bn for the last two lockdowns.
In the first two days of this week, 86,000 businesses were paid either $3,000 through the licensed hospitality venue fund, or $2,000 through the Business Cost Assistance Program.
The support announced on Wednesday will be an automatic top-up of $4,200 for hospitality, or $2,800 for business cost assistance.
Businesses not registered for GST and with turnovers under $75,000 should still apply for the business support, but Pakula said those businesses could also apply for the federal Covid disaster payments of $600 a week if they have lost 20 hours or more, or $375 for between eight and 20 hours lost.
