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Reuters
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has backtracked after suggesting that vaccinations against the coronavirus could be mandatory.
Announcing a deal that could provide free doses for the entire population of Australia, Mr Morrison said there should only be medical exemptions.
But after concerns raised by health experts, he explained: “There are no mandatory vaccines in Australia.”
Meanwhile, visitors to Australia may also be required to have immunization.
Ministry of Health Greg Hunt said he “would not rule out” making it mandatory for anyone traveling to Australia – including Australians returning to the country – if that was the advice of medical experts.
“It would seem strange if we had a massive vaccination program in Australia, but we would then allow people who could bring it in,” he told A Current Affair.
Australia’s first vaccination
The Australian Government has announced that it has signed a letter of intent with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which is one of five coronavirus vaccine administrators to reach an advanced stage of clinical trials.
Mr Morrison said if the trials were successful, he hoped the vaccine would be available early next year. “We will be producing and delivering faxes directly under our own steam and making it free for 25 million Australians,” he said.
He told radio station 3AW that he expected it to be “as mandatory as you can possibly make it”, although his government still shaped the policy. “There are always exemptions for each vaccine on medical grounds, but that should be the only basis.
“We are talking about a pandemic that has destroyed the world economy and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands around the world, and here more than 430 Australians.”
The country would aim to vaccinate 95% of the population, he added.
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University of Oxford
The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine trial is in an advanced stage
Vaccinations are not required in Australia. Behavioral scientist Julie Leask told the Sydney Morning Herald that it was “too early and incomplete” to talk about mandating a vaccine for Covid-19 “if we do not even have a vaccine that we know actually works”, and she warned for a possible ‘backlog’.
Mr. Morrison, in the clarity of his position later, told 2GB radio station that “there would be no mandatory faxing, but there would be a lot of encouragement and measures to get as high an acceptable as usual.”
Mr Hunt said he hoped to take up the mass of the vaccine with a range of “incentives and encouragement”.
Outbreak in Victoria
The cost of delivering the vaccine to the entire population is not yet fixed. In addition, Australia has signed a $ 25 million (£ 13.5 million; $ 18 million) deal with Becton Dickinson, a US pharmaceutical company, to supply 100 million needles and syringes.
Australia has recorded 450 deaths from coronavirus, mostly from an outbreak in the state of Victoria.
Earlier this month, Victoria declared a state of disaster and put them on strictly guarded measures following an increase in infections.
It still has more than 7,000 active cases, but the number of new infections has decreased in the past week.
