Australia Begins Mass Vaccination Of COVID-19, Prioritizing Health Workers And Elderly

Illustration (Sam Moqadam/Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Australian authorities will start a mass COVID-19 vaccine program on Monday 22 February. The priorities for mass vaccination this time are health workers and the elderly (seniors).

"Today is a real milestone in our collective response to tackling COVID-19 and getting things under control as quickly as possible," Acting Chief of Medical Officer Michael Kidd told Australian Broadcasting Corp television, as quoted from Reuters.

The vaccine, jointly developed by Pfizer Inc and Germany's BioNTech, will be launched in the early weeks, while AstraZeneca's first batch is expected to arrive in Australia in the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, most of Australia's 25 million population will be injected with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will be produced locally by CSL Ltd in mid-March. Authorities plan to vaccinate the four million inhabitants by March and hope to complete vaccinations by the end of October.

The day before, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and a number of other people received the first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, February 21, 2021. Local health authorities are targeting to be able to vaccinate 60 thousand people in the first week of the vaccination program.

Australia itself is listed as one of the countries with the lowest cases of infection and death due to COVID-19 in the world. Kangaroo country recorded 29 thousand cases of infection and 909 deaths due to COVID-19, lower than any other country.