Australian govt secures doses of two potential coronavirus vaccines

CANBERRA - The Australian government has signed deals to secure millions of doses of two more coronavirus candidate vaccines early in 2021.

Under the new deals, announced by Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison on Thursday, Australia has secured 40 million doses of a vaccine being developed by biotechnology company Novavax and 10 million doses of the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech.

Both candidate vaccines are expected to be available in Australia in the first half of 2021, subject to approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for use in Australia.

Morrison said that there was no guarantee the trials would be successful but the agreements put Australia at the front of the queue if they were.

"By securing multiple COVID-19 vaccines we are giving Australians the best shot at early access to a vaccine, should trials prove successful," he said.

"We aren't putting all our eggs in one basket and we will continue to pursue further vaccines should our medical experts recommend them."

The deals announced on Thursday take the government's total spend on securing vaccine doses to more than 3.2 billion Australian dollars (about 2.3 billion U.S. dollars).

In September, Morrison announced that the government had signed deals for 51 million doses of the University of Queensland/CSL vaccine and 33.8 million doses of that from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.

Greg Hunt, the Minister for Health, reiterated on Thursday that vaccines would be optional in Australia with priority given to the elderly and health care workers.

"The goal and the expectation is that Australians who sought vaccination will be vaccinated within 2021," he said.