Australian Minister for Health Greg Hunt said on Monday that the COVID-19 vaccination rollout late 2020 in the country was expected to be completed by the end of October in 2021.
Hunt told a news conference that the country’s vaccine programme “is on track and ahead of schedule.”
He said the developments with regards to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, whose progress through the international regulators was ahead of where he had previously understood it to have been.
When he was asked about whether there was any likelihood that the vaccine rolled out earlier than planned, Hunt said the guidance remained March.
“We’ll stick by our March time frame, but our goal is always under promise, over deliver,” he said.
“And we expect that Australians will be fully vaccinated by the end of October, on the basis of its free, universal, and entirely voluntary.”
As of Monday afternoon, there had been 28,337 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia.
Meanwhile, the numbers of local and overseas acquired cases in the last 24 hours were five and nineteen, respectively, according to the latest figures from the Department of Health. (Xinhua/NAN)
