It’s not too late for Australia to repair our vaccine strategy, though we will never make up for the months lost.
Australia’s policy performance on COVID-19 in 2020 was world-leading in terms of both public health and economics. Sadly, our vaccine roll-out strategy has been anything but.
I’ve spent plenty of time highlighting this in recent months. But perhaps the most instructive thing to do is compare and contrast Australia’s back-of-the-pack performance with Israel’s – which is truly world-class.
Israel has shown a sense of urgency with its vaccine strategy and roll-out.
The country has gone from having a large infection rate – including from highly contagious variants of COVID-19 – to having herd immunity within its reach. This, in turn, has allowed it to open up the economy with all the benefits that flow from that.
Australia has a lot to learn.
Israel’s roll-out
Just a few months ago, in mid-January, Israel had the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate in the world.
Now, as the following chart shows, the number of infections is less than a quarter the level recorded on January 17.
This is clearly due to Israel’s vaccination program, which began on December 19, 2020 – just 10 days after the first Pfizer doses arrived in the country.
Israel was well ahead of most countries in signing a purchase agreement for Moderna’s high-efficacy mRNA vaccine in June 2020. Later in 2020 it made more deals with Pfizer (which also produces a very high-efficacy vaccine) and AstraZeneca.
Read the article by Richard Holden in UNSW Newsroom.