Kids’ vaccines are the latest rollout fiasco, with deliveries failing to show up and governments in denial.
While the Department of Health says deliveries of children’s vaccines are fully on track, in bountiful supply and definitely not delayed, GPs on the ground tell another story.
With the school year starting in the last week of January for most states, many parents are keen to get their children at least partially vaccinated before the end of the month.
The Department of Health believes this is achievable for the majority of Australian families.
“More than two million covid-19 paediatric doses have been cleared through TGA testing and are being distributed around the country this week and over the coming weeks,” a spokesperson for the department said.
“There are more than enough covid-19 vaccines in the country to ensure all children aged 5-11 can receive a first dose before the end of January.”
The vaccination course itself is made up of two one-third doses of the Pfizer vaccine, given eight weeks apart.
On Monday, the first day of the paediatric rollout, just over 35,000 children aged five to 11 received their first dose of the vaccine.
Roughly 6000 vaccination sites – mostly general practices – are currently participating in this leg of the rollout, but this will grow to 8000 over the coming weeks.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd called the number of jabs delivered on day one a “very strong start”, despite the fact that 35,000 doses spread over 6000 vaccination sites equates to just six children vaccinated per clinic.
Primary care clinicians across the country have reported having their vaccine deliveries delayed and being forced to cancel appointments due to the lack of stock.
“GPs are telling me that they can’t obtain enough stock, whilst others have had their orders cancelled at the last minute or received expired doses,” RACGP President Dr Karen Price said.
“Some practices are being given 50 or 100 doses a week when they have around 1500 children on their books.
“It’s not hard to do the maths and realise that we simply cannot keep up with demand.”
This. We are still waiting for our supply to arrive. We have approximately 1500 children aged 5-11. We have only been allowed to request 200 per week max. We have emailed to request some more and are yet to receive a reply. https://t.co/56ilhgqDWc
— Dr Maria Boulton (@BoultonMaria) January 10, 2022
Dr Price called for more of the state and territory-allocated paediatric vaccine supply to be redirected to general practice.
The DoH has denied that there are delays to vaccine deliveries.
“Operation Covid Shield advises all orders are on track to be delivered as scheduled and advised to providers once the orders had been placed,” a department spokesperson told The Medical Republic on Monday.
“No provider should be cancelling appointments.”
Some providers who did not receive their vaccine shipment on time were told there was a software glitch on the part of the government’s delivery partner which caused around 100 practices to miss out on their ordered doses.
Dr Alvin Chua, a GP based in Adelaide, was told his practice’s supply of vaccines – which had failed to turn up on the scheduled date of Friday 7 January – was one of these 100 shipments.
When he was able to get in touch with someone who could put him through to the logistics centre the next day, Dr Chua was told that everything was shut for the weekend.
“On Monday morning I spoke to the distribution centre, who basically said that they couldn’t find our delivery,” he told TMR.
“They said it was missing in action, so we would just have to wait until the 14th of January, when we might or might not get it.”
On the same Saturday that Dr Chua was struggling to get through to the delivery logistics team to track his shipment, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said he hadn’t received “any information that would suggest there were any [delivery] holdups whatsoever”.
Mr Marshall maintained that he was only aware of one clinic which had not received orders on time, and that was to do with how late the order was placed, rather than delivery delays.
“That’s what triggered me, because it’s all swell to blame GPs – and if it’s our fault then fine, we will cop it on the chin like we always do,” Dr Chua said.
“But for politicians there’s no responsibility whatsoever at the best of times.”
After reaching out to multiple politicians via social media, Dr Chua’s clinic received its missing vaccine stock late on Tuesday afternoon.
Luckily, the practice had not yet opened appointments for children, having been stung by delivery delays in the past, and didn’t have to deal with the admin work of cancelling and rebooking.
Other clinics weren’t so lucky.
One NSW GP took to Reddit to vent their frustrations with the system after their stock also no-showed on Friday.
“I now have to spend my weekend calling 200 parents to inform them that their children will have to receive their vaccines at a later date because the government is so incompetent that they can’t get anything right with the vaccine rollout,” the GP wrote.
“I’m so beyond furious and upset that this continues to happen.”
AMA NSW Council Chair Dr Michael Bonning told The Medical Republic that annoyance over delayed deliveries, order caps or both was widespread.
“It’s just quite frustrating that there wasn’t a better plan, that there wasn’t better communication,” he said.
Dr Bonning also said he was concerned about the low number of vaccinations given on the first day of the rollout – the six doses per site.
“To me, that does not sound like we’re at the peak of our capacity and ability to put out vaccines out into the community,” he said.
“It sounds like we’re a long way away from what we should be trying to achieve.”
Nine newspapers have today quoted NSW Health Deputy Secretary Susan Pearce as saying she was told by the Commonwealth yesterday that supply would improve “particularly between now and next week”.
