The federal government either deliberately chose the 'wait and see' strategy on procuring COVID-19 vaccines or was simply too slow to act to secure agreements for doses.
Which was it? Or, was it both?
As reported by BioPharmaDispatch, the Department of Health advised the federal government in the first period of the pandemic to adopt a 'wait and see' approach on the basis of the historic challenges associated with the development of vaccines.
It was a stunning miscalculation that frustrated the vaccine companies who were consistently told well into the pandemic that the government was not ready to discuss procurement.
This 'wait and see' approach left Australia at the back of a limited number of queues for vaccines it was able to join once the National Cabinet endorsed the government's procurement strategy on 7 August.
Yet if the Government and the Department of Health want to deny the existence of the 'wait and see' approach for much of 2020 then the only other conclusion can be a lack of urgency, or worse.
Australia's COVID-19 national immunisation program is characterised by supply constraints. This was acknowledged at last Friday's public hearing of the ongoing Senate inquiry into the national response to the pandemic by the leader of its 'Operation COVID-19 Shield' Lieutenant General John Frewen.
This supply constraint was built into the rollout by decisions taken during 2020.
The government was simply too slow to finalise agreements for vaccine candidates.
In fact, it did not finalise agreements for any vaccine candidates until it announced the three-way deal with AstraZeneca and CSL on 7 September 2020.
At the time, the prime minister said this agreement put Australia 'at the front of the pack' to be amongst the first countries in the world to access COVID-19 vaccines.
Yet by the time this agreement was announced, other governments and countries had confirmed dozens of deals for over five billion doses of the investigative candidates.
Following the agreement with AstraZeneca and CSL, which involved the complex repurposing of a major manufacturing facility in Melbourne, on 8 October the government announced another manufacturing and procurement deal with the Australian company for the candidate being developed by the University of Queensland (UQ). The government had invested just $5 million in the development of this candidate that did not proceed beyond an early-stage clinical trial
On 5 November, it then announced the first 10 million doses deal for Pfizer's mRNA vaccine. Yet this deal was not actually finalised until 24 December.
By the time it was finalised, Pfizer was already delivering doses of the vaccine to the UK, US and Israel.
On 11 December, and in response to the failure of the UQ candidate, the government announced an extension to its agreement with AstraZeneca and CSL and a deal for 11 million doses of the Novavax candidate.
At the end of the calendar year 2020, the government had essentially secured agreements for two vaccines that would be delivered in 2021.
The vast majority of the AstraZeneca doses would be manufactured by CSL and would be the 'workhorse' of Australia's rollout in 2021. The agreement with Pfizer was subsequently extended to 40 million doses but most of these would be delivered in the second half of 2021, meaning they were intended to be 'supportive' of AstraZeneca's 'workhorse'.
The simple fact is that Australia did not finalise any dose agreements until September 2020. Australia's rollout is behind so many other countries significantly because of this delay in securing agreements compared to so many other countries. This delay was caused by a deliberate 'wait and see' approach or a simple lack of urgency. Regardless, the end result is the same.
