Leaked figures confirm fears of a drop in Australia’s supply of Pfizer vaccine |
States and territories were told at national cabinet their allocations of Pfizer will fall from 10.9m in September to 8.4m in October.
The leaked figures, seen by Guardian Australia, substantiate concerns that there is a reduction of Pfizer supply in the critical month that New South Wales and Victoria intend to reach the 70% vaccination target and push towards further reopening at 80%.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has insisted supplies of mRNA vaccines are up from 10m in September to 11m in October.
But the national cabinet figures and fresh allocations provided to the states on Thursday suggest this has only been achieved through increased supplies of Moderna and using UK doses of Pfizer to smooth supply gaps.
Hunt and state and territory leaders have been feuding about the supply shortage all week after Hunt claimed to have fixed the issue on Monday with vaccines from the 4m dose swap deal with the UK.
The figures supplied at Friday’s national cabinet meeting show that from September to October Australia’s “total inbound supply” of Pfizer is set to increase from 9m to 9.3m.
But despite that increase, states and territory leaders were warned of a 2.45m reduction in “allocated supply” from September to October – raising questions about when in October the doses from the company will arrive, and why they cannot be more quickly allocated to the states.
The impact of the shortfall was expected to be felt across state and territory clinics, which will have 577,000 fewer doses in October, and primary care, which will have 2m fewer.
States were told that Australia will receive 3m Moderna doses in October, up from 2m in September, but Australia’s total allocated vaccine supply will fall from 15m to 14.9m.
In NSW, total supply was projected to fall from 4.6m in September to 4.3m in October, due to a reduction in Pfizer from 3.4m to 2.7m. In Victoria, total supply falls from 3.5m to 3.3m due to a fall in Pfizer from 2.7m to 2.2m.
Pfizer supplies were projected to decrease in all states and territories from September to October:
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In Queensland, from 2.15m to 1.68m
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In Western Australia, from 1.14m to 859,000
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In South Australia from 774,000 to 544,000
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In Tasmania from 287,000 to 201,000
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In the Australia Capital Territory from 218,000 to 156,000; and
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In the Northern Territory from 154,000 to 100,000
The Victorian premier, Dan Andrews, revealed on Monday that the head of the national Covid vaccine taskforce, Lt Gen John Frewen, had advised states of a “problem” with Pfizer supplies due in October.
On Monday, Hunt claimed the problem was limited to “the timing of one shipment over the course of two weeks”.
“We’ve been able to resolve that over the course of the weekend,” he said.
“We’ve been able to ensure that our UK doses arrived earlier, and as a consequence of that, we have 1.9m doses of mRNA that are available for this week. Next week, there’s an increase in that, and the following week, we’ll also see well over 1.9m doses in the first week of October.”
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