Health Minister Greg Hunt has pledged to work with state governments over the rollout of the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination program despite claims the federal government is withholding doses.
Speaking this afternoon Mr Hunt refused to become embroiled in the argument between the Commonwealth and the states in who is responsible for the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccination program.
Mr Hunt has pledged to work with the states and said “all of them are doing their absolute best and doing an excellent job”.
He refused to be drawn into questions which asked him the government’s timeline for when four million Australians will be vaccinated, saying only he expects most who seek vaccination to have their first dose by the end of October.
“The best advice that we have, as Professor Murphy reaffirmed when he stood up with the Prime Minister recently, is that we remain on track to complete first doses for all Australians who seek it by the end of October,” Mr Hunt said.
Mr Hunt’s comments come after a controversial appearance by Federal MP David Littleproud, who told Today the states need to “pull their finger out”.
Both New South Wales and Queensland governments fired back following the “offensive” remarks.
“The states have been tasked with this responsibility, we all have a responsibility and a role to play and you just have to do it. The fact is they have left these in the rack when they could have put these things in people’s arm,” Mr Littleproud said.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard fired back at the Federal Government, saying he is as “angry as I have ever been in this 15 months of war against this virus”.
“Let’s get this really, really clear: the New South Wales Government was asked to roll out 300,000 vaccinations to the groups in 1A and 1B. Of that we have done 100,000,” Mr Hazzard said.
“The Federal Government was asked and is responsible for 5.5 million people and they have rolled out 50,000. I think the figures speak for themselves.”
He also asked for an apology from the Commonwealth.
“Not happy at all today and I think the Federal Government should be offering apologies to not only our government, but other governments around the country,” Mr Hazzard said.
“We are at the frontline of a war, NSW and the other public health teams and we have been doing a very good job with our public health officials, working hard. I find this very offensive.”
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian described the criticism about the state’s delayed progress as “extremely unfair”.
“When we are given 24 or 48 hours notice about how many new doses we are getting, and as you can appreciate, disseminating that within 24 hours or 48 hours is a difficult task,” she said.
“We want to work with the Federal Government to make that happen but I will not have untrue statements made publicly about what is a complex system.”
Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles also addressed the “particularly offensive remarks” in a press conference today, insisting it was the Federal Government that needed to “do better”.
“He said that if the Federal Government needs to do better, then they should get an uppercut,” Mr Miles said.
“Well, it’s time that he should give himself an uppercut.
“The states are doing what they can, with what has been distributed to them.”
Australia’s rollout has been plagued by supply shortages and delays and is currently ranked 94th in the world.
Queensland has received 106,000 vaccine doses, but has only administered just over 65,000 of those jabs, meaning 50,000 are in storage waiting to be used.
Victoria has carried out 100,000 vaccines, which is only 44 per cent of the jabs available in the state.
In NSW, only 50 per cent of available jabs have been used.
Thousands of frontline health workers are also still waiting to get the jab across the country.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk denied claims Queensland was “stockpiling vaccines”, despite the state being behind on its jab rollout target.
“We are not stockpiling vaccines,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“We need to have guaranteed supply and we need to have guaranteed times of delivery.”
Ms Palaszczuk called for the Federal Government to release figures every day on the supply of coronavirus vaccines, in order to ramp up the process.
The premier suggested the rollout delay was partly due to the state ensuring there was enough vaccine supply for second doses.
“What we needed to do is to make sure that we had enough for the second vaccine,” she said.
“If the Commonwealth can tell us what their supply is, we are more than happy to roll out the rest of that as quickly as possible.
“But can you imagine what will happen if we do not have the second dosage for people who have had their first in the 12-week period.”
Mr Littleproud said the Federal Government would be willing to surge resources to support states and territories in ramping up the rollout.
“We have plenty coming through, you cannot leave them in the rack, you have to put them in people’s arms and get us out of this whole situation,” he said.
“That is the only way to get the jabs moving. We are going to help the states but they have to admit they have a problem because they have done three fifths of bugger all and they are holding this nation back.”
This content first appear on 9news