Australian vaccine abandoned over risk to ‘confidence’: Greg Hunt

Health Minister Greg Hunt says the “risk to vaccine confidence” was the “principal issue” that led to the government axing its deal for the University of Queensland-CSL COVID-19 vaccine. “The scientific advice is that the risk to vaccine confidence was the principal issue here, and we made the decision unanimously as a National Security Committee, the scientific advice was unanimous, the agreement with CSL not to proceed was mutual,” Mr Hunt said on Friday morning from Canberra. “This is the scientific process working. it's the planning process working, it's an honest explanation of some of the challenges we've had.” Mr Hunt’s remarks came after the government deal for the University of Queensland-CSL vaccine was abandoned along with clinical trials. He said Australia had well above the required threshold to vaccinate the population, despite the setback. “The Australian vaccine portfolio - 53.8 million AstraZeneca units – that's enough to cover the whole of population, 51 million Novavax units – that's enough to cover the whole of population, 10 million Pfizer units, which is the advice that we have is appropriate, and 25.5 million units available under the COVAX Facility,” he said. “So all up over 140 million units of vaccine available to Australia, and the advice I have is that this is one of the highest ratios of vaccine purchases and availability to population in the world.”