The Prime Minister says he has asked national cabinet and health ministers to “move back to an operational footing” to tackle the program’s challenges.
This comes as the rollout is being recalibrated following the medical advice restricting the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 50.
Mr Morrison’s action on the national cabinet and his comments are his bluntest admission so far of the program’s difficulties, which started from its beginning and have multiplied ever since.
“There are serious challenges we need to overcome caused by patchy international vaccine supplies, changing medical advice and a global environment of need caused by millions of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” he said in a statement.
“This is a complex task and there are problems with the programme that we need to solve to ensure more Australians can be vaccinated safely and more quickly.”
He said the federal government was trying to deal with its issues “and I have been upfront about those”.
But states and territories were also tackling their own issues, he said.
“Working together we are all going to be in a better position to find the best solutions.”
The federal government has taken the main responsibility for the rollout, but it does not have the states’ experience at service delivery and this has added to the problems.
The new regime for national cabinet meetings will start on Monday and continue “until we solve the problems and get the programme back on track”.
It has been recently meeting only about monthly.
A woman in her 40s is recovering in the Darwin Hospital after being transferred from a regional hospital in northern Western Australia. The Western Australian Health Minister, Roger Cook, said the woman was in a stable condition in ICU.
On Monday, more than 56,000 doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines were administered.
This content first appear on 9news