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Australia's COVID vaccination program

Key articles:-

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Articles of interest:-

  • Developing an mRNA facility to manufacture mRNA vaccines and other medicines. The government is starting to understand why this is a high-priority MUST-DO project for Australia.

    • https://twitter.com/normanswan/status/1383701908230008836  18/Apr/21 Norman Swan: "They’re talking years. Germany did it in Marburg in months. Support grows in Morrison government for next-gen vaccines being made locally."

      • https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/support-grows-in-morrison-government-for-next-gen-vaccines-being-made-locally-20210415-p57jkf.html   18/Apr/21  This is extreme good and sensible news. But clearly as Norman Swan suggests, our time-frames need to be far more aggressive - months, not years!

        • "Australian Academy of Science president John Shine, a professor of molecular biology and chairman of Melbourne-based CSL until 2018, said the academy strongly supported establishing the manufacturing capacity onshore."

        • "Professor Shine said the benefit of mRNA vaccines was that it was relatively straightforward to re-calibrate them as variants of a virus emerge, as has happened with COVID-19, compared to older-style vaccines."

      • Let us put this in perspective:

        • The Federal Government has so far spent a couple of hundred Billion dollars to try to manage the economic consequences of the COVID pandemic.

        • Therefore, spending $500million dollars (as quoted in this article) to build a world-class mRNA facility (including large-scale mRNA vaccine manufacturing)  is very cheap insurance for Australia and for the Australian economy.

          • This is far less than 1% of Australia's total COVID cost so far.

          • So clearly from a cost/benefit perspective, this is a very high-priority MUST-DO project for Australia.

    • "Australia looks to add local mRNA manufacturing capability"  19/Apr/2021

      • http://puzzlefinancialadvice.com.au/2021/COVID/210419_AFR_Australia_looks_to_add_local_mRNA_manufacturing_capability.pdf       

        • Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler said the government needed to put words into action on local mRNA vaccine capability. “Other countries Germany, for example, decided they wanted to manufacture their own mRNA vaccines in country to be assured of supplies of these state-of-the-art vaccines, and they built a factory in about six months,” he said.  “It’s needed very urgently. These are highly effective vaccines. We know that through the fact that we have a deal with Pfizer, but we’re reliant on suppliers from overseas. We have no deal with Moderna, the other mRNA vaccine.”  

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