Gladys Berejiklian reveals why she CAN’T order more Pfizer doses
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Gladys Berejiklian has revealed why she can’t order more Pfizer doses as she hinted at Sydney’s lockdown being extended.
The New South Wales Premier said with 112 cases recorded overnight, restrictions would continue in Sydney, Wollongong, the Central Coast and the Blue Mountains beyond July 16.
‘Given where the numbers are, it’s impossible for us to get out of lockdown on Friday,’ she said.
Insufficient vaccination supplies have been blamed for the lockdown but with just nine per cent of Sydney residents fully vaccinated, Ms Berejiklian said the NSW government was not in a position to order extra Pfizer doses.
‘That’s like asking me to interfere in foreign policy,’ she said.
Questions are being asked about why Health Minister Greg Hunt has failed to secure enough Pfizer doses.
But Mr Hunt said he ‘chuckled’ when he saw an ABC online story about former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd securing earlier supply of the company’s vaccines.
‘I had a little chuckle when I saw the story,’ he said.
‘We received a letter from the individual in question, I think, not long ago and we said to ourselves, ”Well, no doubt that will be released when our current negotiations are announced”. That is exactly what happened.’
In November, the federal Department of Health had only secured enough Pfizer doses to fully immunise just five million people in Australia – or less than a fifth of the population.
Mr Rudd last week suggested Mr Hunt needed to be sacked.
‘Breakdowns of fundamental standards of governance don’t come much bigger than the Morrison government’s medley of pandemic policy and performance failures on aged care, quarantine and vaccination,’ he said in a Nine newspapers opinion piece.
‘For these reasons, Health Minister Greg Hunt should resign, or else Morrison should dismiss him now.’
Labor’s health spokesman Mark Butler said Prime Minister Scott Morrison needed to step aside.
‘If the Prime Minister doesn’t want to be straight with the Australian people he should step aside and let someone else do his job,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Instead of doing his job and leading Australians he insisted the vaccine rollout wasn’t a race and that we were “at the front of the queue”.’
But Mr Morrison confirmed on Friday that his government had since bought a total of 40million Pfizer doses by the end of 2021, enough to fully vaccinate 20million Australians after the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation recommended AstraZeneca for those under 60.
‘We’ve announced today, we’ve been working hard to bring those Pfizer’s forward because of the challenges that have been with AstraZeneca,’ he told A Current Affair.
University of New South Wales Adjunct Professor Bill Bowtell, a health policy consultant who led Australia’s response to AIDs during the 1980s, said a royal commission would one day be needed into Australia’s poor vaccination purchasing decisions.
‘In due course, there should be a commission of inquiry and we can see exactly which ministers and leaders did what, said what, were advised to do,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘The Australian people will hold every political leader accountable for their actions over the course of the last 18 months.’
In September last year, Jenny Mikakos resigned as health minister after a bungled hotel quarantining program, using a private security company, was linked to 750 Covid deaths. 
Mr Rudd had a virtual meeting with the boss of Pfizer about bringing forward Australia’s supply of the Covid vaccine.
The former prime minister, who led the country from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013, had a zoom meeting with Albert Bourla arranged by prominent Australian business figures in the United States eight days before Pfizer agreed to hasten its deliveries.
During the meeting, the former Labor leader asked Dr Bourla if there was any way the company could dispatch some of Australia’s 40million contracted jabs earlier than planned given the outbreak in Sydney.
Pfizer said it had also dealt directly with the Australian government to arrange the shipments.
‘Recent media reports suggesting that any third party or individual has had any role in contractual agreements reached between Pfizer and the Australian government are inaccurate,’ it said.
Department of International Relations and European Studies https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Politics&nvaug=%5bNewsVertical+Category%3d%22rt_Politics%22%5d&FORM=NSBABR
