Australia misses vaccine target as concerns grow over slow rollout

The picture heading this story: As a former Nurse, I have to ask where the administrator or the vaccine's gloves are! Perhaps this glilb attitude is a conytibutor to the issue at hand!

Pharma has plants where they can make the most money, unless there are govt supports. In the US, all health insurance subsidizes the creation total profit for pharma companies around the world. Follow the money.

Canada has the same issue - govt controlled pricing of drugs. Almost always, this is better, until it is time to move fast and create good solutions. That is when unlimited funding and capitalism works better, with safety oversight by a trustworthy govt.

Some interesting charts/graphs about vaccine rollout around the world:

https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/vaccination-rollout-and-access/

About 63% of people who have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine were from high income countries, and at least 60% were from Europe and North America.

Australia infections and deaths are very low, so they can continue the current methods as vaccine supplies expand around the world.

The AZ vaccine can be produced locally. All countries that can should have poured cash into building multiple vaccine production labs. Why are they delaying this? It is damaging economies and risking lives.

That is simplifying things way way way too much!

Building Vaccine production facilities bus not like settings up a clothing production line.

Sterilization, negative airflow facilities, very very specialised equipment, needed specialist, etc....

On top of it all the base materials needed to produce Vaccine.

UK hasn't exported a single dose of Vaccine but it has had to export the needed base chemicals to AZ and Pfizer factories in the EU so they could produce Vaccine which the UK then claims it has first shot at.

Many of the production problems are because of a shortage of the needed base products/chemicals.

So not only are countries hoarding Vaccine but many are now trying to get their hands on as much base products/chemicals as they can either for up coming local production or as a bargaining chip to get Vaccine if their orders are not being shipped do to blockades.

Welcome to the new reality, grab what you can hold on to it and don't let go until you get what you need for it. Money may not work but holding back the needed supplies sure makes other move faster.

Australia has a 2.12% population vaccinated.

Japan has 0.7%

Is doing 3 orders of magnitude better than Japan.

3 times as many. 3 orders of magnitude would be 1000 times

The UK is throttling back on vaccines because a shipment of 5m doses has been blocked by India. They are expecting a rise in cases, but hoping that the vaccination of those over 50 will ensure that hospital admissions don't also rise.

I wouldn't surprised if the UK had another lockdown in the summer - June to August.

The AZ vaccine can be produced locally. All countries that can should have poured cash into building multiple vaccine production labs. Why are they delaying this? It is damaging economies and risking lives.

Such bottlenecks were avoidable. They should have been fixed.

UK has not blocked anything

Seriously?

The UK and AZ have both refused to say if or how much Vaccine made in the UK has been exported.

And all research hasn't been able to find a single shipment.

AZ and the UK refuse to show any details.

So officially the UK can say it isn't blocking exports but in reality it has seeing not a single shipment has been sent outside of the UK.

Antiquesaving, UK has not blocked anything. The EU introduced a system to block vaccine exports which Italy used to block the Australian order.

Free markets would vaccines where they are needed most, not this central planning

Not in a million years.

It would vaccinate where those that can afford to pay more are not where the most need is.

A quick look at the USA makes that very obvious with harder hit poor areas being the same places where getting vaccinated is more difficult.

Now we look at the UK and it's success to date or parts of Canada where certain provincial governments had long established online systems for influenza vaccination in place that were just tweeked to be used for covid vaccination, these went perfectly as long as they had the vaccine in stock ( which thanks to the EU, UK and USA blockade on exporting Vaccine meant they ran out of Vaccine a few times).

Free markets would vaccines where they are needed most, not this central planning

Australia has a 2.12% population vaccinated.

Japan has 0.7%

Is doing 3 orders of magnitude better than Japan.

Having low targets, like Japan has, would reassure positive evaluation.

Countries producing their own Astra Zeneca vaccine is the key to a swift roll out. Of course buy in other vaccines too, but the AZ one can be produced by any country that has the facilities and does not need special storage. It can be produced at cost price as the AZ vaccine has an open licence. I do not understand why countries that can did not start manufacturing it weeks ago.

It's just that there's no system in place. They're not thinking things through. I'm tired of this fuzzy thinking.

Why compare to NZ?

Their roll out has been faster than New Zealand's, and they'll be able to ramp things up easily enough given CSL can produce vaccines domestically.