First doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine arrive in Australia

Australia’s first 300,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine have arrived in Sydney.(ABC News)

Australia’s first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine have been flown into Sydney.

The vaccine doses have been transported to a storage facility in Western Sydney, where they are being kept under tight security.

They will now be batch-tested before a planned rollout to priority groups early next month.

Pending the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) clearance processes, the rollout of these doses will start on March 8.

While the first batches of the vaccine have come from overseas, the government plans to start producing the jabs in Australia.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is the second vaccine to arrive in Australia.

Vaccinations with the Pfizer vaccine are already underway.

In a joint statement, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt said 300,000 doses arrived in today’s shipment.

“The first doses of this vaccine have arrived from overseas ahead of 50 million doses to be manufactured by CSL here in Australia on behalf of AstraZeneca,” the statement said.

The TGA will now batch-test the vaccines to ensure they meet Australia’s strict quality standards.

Mr Morrison said today was a significant milestone for the vaccine rollout.

“This is the next step as we ramp up the vaccine rollout,” he said.

“The University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will undergo the same rigorous TGA process to batch check the vaccine that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine underwent.

“We will now be able to scale up the vaccination rollout to our priority groups, including our most vulnerable Australians, and to our frontline border and health workers.”

Vaccines undergoing temperature checks

At a media conference in Melbourne, Mr Hunt said he was “delighted” the vaccines had arrived.

“In one shipment we have more than doubled the total amount of vaccines that have arrived in Australia,” he said.

“I understand they have been safely transported to the warehouse, temperature checking is underway, but preliminary advice is that temperature has been maintained throughout the course of the flight, this is the first part of the process,” Mr Hunt added.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine can be distributed at fridge temperature making it easier to transport it to remote regions.

Mr Hunt described today’s vaccine arrival as “another important milestone”.

“More shipments will follow and then in late March, the first of the CSL Australian made, Australian-produced AstraZeneca vaccines are expected to arrive on the basis of 1 million doses per week, with approximately 2 million expected before the end of March,” he said.

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