Australia to start vaccinating against COVID-19 from mid-February

Sydney, Australia, Jan 7 (efe-epa).- Australia plans to start the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 from mid-February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Thursday, without specifying a date.

Morrison said during a press conference that he expects about 4 million people to be vaccinated in the country by the end of March.

The vaccination program will begin with the elderly and disabled people who are in care centers, as well as the health workers and personnel of these centers, in addition to the officials in the places authorized to keep quarantine and at border control.

“Vaccines are a key component in 2021 for our management against the pandemic,” Morrison said, noting that inoculation will be free and voluntary.

Health authorities are waiting for the drug regulatory body to approve the Pzifer vaccine, possibly in late January, which would still take another two weeks to reach the country.

Later, once the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved for use in Australia, doses will be administered to the general elderly population and Aboriginal people over 35 years of age, as well as other workers in risk sectors.

The Morrison government has signed agreements to obtain more than 110 million doses of vaccines with Pzifer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and the Covax Facility coalition, after the team from the Australian University of Queensland abandoned studies on its vaccine in December in the wake of of some false positives of HIV.

Australia is currently registering outbreaks of COVID-19 in Sydney and Melbourne, whose combined population accounts for half of the country’s 25 million inhabitants, and accumulates 28,536 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, including 909 deaths. EFE-EPA

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