Australia plans to start the roll out of the Pfizer/BioNTech CoViD-19 vaccine next week.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the country was on track for the first and most vulnerable Australians to start receiving the vaccine from 22 February.

Over 142,000 doses of the vaccine arrived in the country earlier this week and is the first shipment of 20 million Pfizer doses the government has secured as part of its vaccination / treatment strategy.

Approximately 80,000 doses will be released in the first week for hotel quarantine and border workers and frontline healthcare workers, as well as aged care and disability care residents.

It is expected that of these, at least 60,000 will be administered by the end of February with others to be continually administered afterwards.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved the AstraZeneca CoViD-19 vaccine for use on 16 February.

The Prime Minister said the TGA has found the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to be safe and effective and he welcomed their thorough assessment process.

Initial supply into Australia will be imported from overseas and in the coming months, the AstraZeneca vaccine will be manufactured in Australia.

The Australian Government has secured 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with 50 million doses being manufactured in the country.

Australia has also signed up to the COVAX facility, which provides access to a range of vaccines to immunise up to 50 percent of the Australian population.