Australia's COVID-19 vaccines should be sent to countries in the region more at risk of the virus, before the general Australian population is immunised, a leading infectious diseases expert has said.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Professor Peter Collignon from the Australian National University Medical School said while priority workers and those most at-risk should be vaccinated in Australia first, surplus vaccine stock should not then be hoarded by Australia.
Instead, he said additional vaccines should then be sent to developing nations that would ordinarily have faced a longer wait to receive its first doses.
"From an Australian point of view, we want to look to immediate areas around us, like Vietnam or Papua New Guinea," Professor Collignon said.
"The reality is that [Australia] has been good at stopping the spread and there's no community spread. To keep the vaccine for ourselves, that would be selfish."
Australia is set to get the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine from late February, with the first people to get the jab including healthcare and quarantine workers along with aged-care residents and staff.
The federal government has said it hoped to have all eligible Australians vaccinated against COVID-19 by October.
"Australia is in an enviable position with its handling of the pandemic and can do more, much more."
- Professor Peter Collignon
Professor Collignon said with Melbourne-based company CSL being able to manufacture up to 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine each week, Australia had a responsibility to share doses with other parts of the world.
"If rich countries like Australia don't export any of the vaccines they produce, then poor countries aren't going to get much at all for quite a while," he said.
"The World Health Organisation has said that if vaccines are given to rich countries first, it's an equity problem, and we won't get on top of COVID.
"It's a global infection we need to control, rather than just one country.
"Australia is in an enviable position with its handling of the pandemic and can do more, much more."
The warning about vaccine usage in Australia comes as the federal government will start compulsory training for all officials who will administer the COVID-19 vaccine to patients.
It follows incidents overseas, where vaccinations have already begun, where doses have been wasted, partly due to how some of the vaccines have been packaged in multi-dose vials.
Professor Collignon said part of the reason for the large amounts of doses that go unused is because of how the vaccine has to be stored.
"The Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at minus 70, and that's a very different rollout compared to the AstraZeneca vaccine," he said.
"Practical issues as well may lead to wastage."