Australia’s premiers have demanded that the federal government slow the pace of arrivals from overseas, and have queried a decision to allow people under the age of 40 to have AstraZeneca jabs, as the emergence of the highly infectious Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 triggered lockdowns in Sydney, parts of Queensland, Perth and the Northern Territory.
After flagging a review of Australia’s stretched hotel quarantine system during Monday night’s national Cabinet meeting, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday publicly urged Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government to lower the cap on international arrivals for the next three months.
The premiers said restrictions on arrivals would likely prevent further lockdowns while the national COVID-19 vaccination rollout gathers pace.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Palaszczuk and Victoria Minister for Health Martin Foley also queried the signal from Morrison on Monday night after an emergency national Cabinet meeting that people under 40 could now have access to AstraZeneca jabs through general practitioners (GPs) indemnified by the commonwealth.
Palaszczuk — who raised concerns about giving AstraZeneca to people under 60 during a national Cabinet discussion in April — told reporters yesterday that governments should follow advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).
“The clinical advice from ATAGI is that people under the age of 60 should preferentially get Pfizer,” Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said.
Foley said eligibility for AstraZeneca jabs to people under 40 “was not a decision of national Cabinet.”
“If it means more people can get access to more vaccines that’s a good thing, but what we need to do is just clarify precisely what it is that the prime minister has announced and make sure that we put it into operation as quickly and as seamlessly as we can both in our GP clinics and our state vaccination clinics,” Foley said.
Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan told reporters that Monday night’s shift was not a national Cabinet decision, it was a decision of the government.
“The commonwealth makes these decisions, and we were advised” on Monday night, McGowan said.
With the number of COVID-19 infections rising in several states, the Queensland government yesterday imposed a snap lockdown covering southeast Queensland, Townsville, Palm Island and Magnetic Island.
Sydney remains locked down, while Darwin and the surrounding areas have been put into lockdown until 1pm on Friday. In Western Australia, the Perth and Peel regions are also in lockdown.
“We have a large proportion of our state unvaccinated. The federal government is in charge of supply of that vaccination, and we know that it’s all coming in the last quarter” of this year, Palaszczuk said.
“Until that time, there is a real risk, and until that time that the large proportion of the Queensland public are vaccinated, we should massively reduce the number of returning Australians,” she said.
Australian Minister of Health Greg Hunt said that “we have arguably the strongest, or one of the strongest systems in the world.”
Australia had an obligation to “bring people home, as so many want to do, and rightly so,” he said.
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