Australia Receives First Shipment Of Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine From UK, Moderna Soon To Follow

Illustration of a COVID-19 vaccination center in Australia. (Wikimedia Commons/Nick-D)

JAKARTA - Nearly half a million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Australia overnight, the first batch of a swap deal with the UK that Australia is using to accelerate its inoculation programme, officials said Monday.

Australia is battling a third wave of COVID-19 infections with the Delta variant putting Sydney, Melbourne and the capital Canberra under lockdown, leaving more than half of the population of 25 million people at home.

Australia's federal government has promised more freedom of movement, loosening the lockdown, after 70 to 80 per cent of the population over the age of 16 received the full COVID-19 vaccine.

The Kangaroo Country agreed to a vaccine swap deal with the UK and Singapore last week for a total of about 4.5 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, double this month's supply.

"There will be another flight in a few days, but we will get one million doses per week out of a total of four million doses for the next four weeks," Lieutenant General John Frewen, head of the vaccination task force, told broadcaster ABC. September.

Frewen said one million doses of Moderna's vaccine would also reach Australia in the next week or so, becoming the third vaccine after the country previously used Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.

Under the vaccine swap deal, Australia will return equivalent amounts of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to the UK and Singapore later this year.

To date, more than 38 per cent of Australia's adult population has been fully vaccinated, with the country expected to reach 70 per cent by early November, based on the pace of the current COVID-19 vaccination programme.

For information, citing Worldometers Australia as of September 6 recorded 63,142 cases of COVID-19 infection, with 1,044 patients dying and 34,413 patients fully recovering since last year's pandemic.