The government has said it will purchase three vaccines, assuming they are passed as safe by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
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The vaccines which now have proven effectiveness and safety are the ones devised by Pfizer and the German researchers at BioNtech, the one from the University of Oxford and the AstraZeneca pharmaceutical company, and the one from Novovax. The product from the American pharmaceutical company, Moderna, also looks like it will be available.
Vaccines trick the body into fighting a virus. They introduce a mild form of the virus (or something engineered to behave like one) and that triggers the body's immune system to fight the invader. If there is then a real attack, the body remembers how to fight and does it for real.
That's the simple way of putting it but different vaccines have different ways of working and may have different strengths and weaknesses.
What will the approved vaccines do - and not do?
They may not prevent you from catching the disease but they will prevent you from getting ill from it.
"Basically, the vaccines will prevent you from getting symptomatic disease, especially severe COVID-19. They will not necessarily prevent you from getting infected," according to epidemiologist Adrian Esterman, a professor at the University of South Australia.
In other words, a vaccinated person can still catch COVID-19 but won't get sick from it. He or she may not notice that they have it - but they could still infect other people. Recent research suggests, though, that people without symptoms are less likely to infect others than are infected people with the full-blown COVID-19.
This means that the vaccines would dampen any outbreak but might not close it down completely. It is massive progress but not the complete solution.
"The chief executive of BioNtech (the German company which developed the Pfizer vaccine) has said that he thinks their vaccine will prevent 50 per cent of infections.
"In other words, even with the vaccination, there is a 50 per cent chance you could get infected, but it would only be a very mild disease," Professor Esterman said.
"It is also likely (but we don't have the data yet), that people infected after being vaccinated would be less likely to transmit the disease.
"The bottom line is that vaccines will really lower the risk of severe illness, but won't necessarily stop the spread of the disease.
"This means that testing is still very important, especially for international travel. If someone is vaccinated, and tested before and after departure, then they are a very low risk."
What about a new variant of the virus?
A new variant of coronavirus has been found in Britain.
A government minister there said the World Health Organisation had been told. Scientists were doing detailed studies.
But the minister said there was "nothing to suggest" it caused worse disease or that vaccines would no longer work.
The University of South Australia's Adrian Esterman said: "The new variant in the UK is nothing to worry about. The virus is frequently mutating, but nowhere near as much as influenza.
"In particular, the new variant in the UK does not change the characteristics much with respect to pathogenicity (ability to cause disease) or transmissibility, and the vaccines should still work okay against it."
Are people elsewhere being vaccinated?
They are.
Britain was the first. Ninety-year-old Margaret Keenan was the first person in Britain to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. She was followed by 81-year-old William Shakespeare (he really is called William Shakespeare!).
On Monday, the first shots of the same vaccine were given in the American mass vaccination campaign.
Canada is expected to follow soon.
The way the three countries are organising the mass-vaccination differs.
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In Britain, it is very centralised, in that there is a single National Health Service which is coordinating the effort. The government in London chose the 50 hospitals that would initially get the vaccine and oversaw preparations. It drafted the rules for who was where in the queue.
In the United States, the vaccination campaign will depend much more on local decisions. There's been no national rule on who goes first. At one stage, it looked as though people in the White House would get vaccinated first but that decision was reversed after an outcry.
Canada's system is somewhere in between.
And Australia?
Australia's system is likely to be similar to Canada's, with states and territories doing the on-the-ground organisation and the federal government allocating the vaccine and setting the rules.
The government is being ultra-cautious. Australia is later than the other countries, partly because there isn't the urgency here. In the UK and US, the disease is rampant. On one day in Britain this week, for example, 20,263 people tested positive and 232 people died.
Earlier in the month, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: "As we move into the vaccine period, our first priority is that it be safe." He hasn't criticised Britain but the implication is that a more thorough, steadier period of authorisation and preparation would suit Australia.
Over the next few weeks, government officials will work with a host of experts in medicine, logistics, the pharmaceutical industry to plan the roll-out.
Approval of a vaccine is likely by February, with vaccination soon after.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
