Australia gets 1m Pfizer doses from Poland

SYDNEY • Australia has purchased about one million doses of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine from Poland to add to its inoculation efforts in Sydney, which entered a snap lockdown amid record new infections.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday that the extra vaccine doses will start arriving immediately. Over half will be directed to those aged 20 to 39 in New South Wales, as the state reported its second largest increase in local infections.

Mr Morrison has been under pressure for a sluggish vaccine roll-out, with only about 24 per cent of Australians above 16 fully vaccinated as supplies from Pfizer, seen as the preferred inoculation for younger people, have remained in short stock.

"We've been seeing those case numbers rise in Sydney and New South Wales each day and that is terribly concerning," he said at a news conference in Canberra. "We've got to get those numbers coming down... You needed more vaccines from us. More vaccines are on their way. They'll be there this week, and so I need Sydneysiders to stay home so we can beat this thing."

New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, reported 415 new local Covid-19 cases yesterday, the second largest increase after the previous day's record 466.

Of the new doses, 530,000 will be prioritised for express delivery over the coming week to 12 greater Sydney local government areas on arrival, Mr Morrison said. The remaining 470,340 will be distributed on a per capita basis to other states and territories to fast-track inoculations of younger people.

Concerned about growing infections in rural areas as recent sewage tests detected the virus in several regional towns, officials on Saturday ordered a snap seven-day lockdown across the state.

With infections spiking, it is looking increasingly unlikely that Sydney will come out of its nine-week lockdown on Aug 28 as planned.

Only about this percentage of Australians above 16 are fully vaccinated.

Federal and state governments have committed to ending lockdowns when 70 per cent of the country's near 26 million population are vaccinated.

Poland, which has fully vaccinated over a third of its 38 million population, said in a statement that the decision to offer vaccines to Australia was taken in the light of the current outbreak of the Delta variant.

REUTERS