I have talked previously about the fact that many people with disabilities were being left behind in the vaccine roll-out.
Now finally there was some media coverage thanks to one angry Mum named Margaret Ruff who had had enough.
Her son 45 year old Raymond who lives in a residential group home was still waiting for the jab.
This example struck close to home with regards to my older sister.
And now we had the stats.
Out of 26,000 people with disabilities living in care residences across Australia.
Only 999 had received a jab.
The country had moved to 2A of the vaccine rollout to get everybody over 50 vaccinated but at least 25,000 vulnerable people who fell under catergory 1A which started roll-out in February were still waiting for their jabs.
With the India travel ban there had been renewed talk about how to improve our quarantine system in Australia.
In the news that week there was talk of using Bladin Point for overseas workers for Australian farms to be be quarantined. The facility currently did that for a U.S. Marine Rotational Force that trains in the Northern Territory during the dry season.
The Victorian government had also spent $15 million dollar to prepare for the construction of a 500 bed quarantine facility at Mickleham north of Melbourne. It would take $200 million to build but that was small change compared to the cost to the economy when a capital city or state goes into lockdown.
A proposal from Queensland to build at Wellcamp Airport in Toowoomba to quarantine 1,000 travellers and be manned from 300 staff was rejected.
I wondered what were the factors that went into these decisions.
Previously remote locations had been ruled out because of lack of access to major health care facilities.
On the other hand the push was to mitigate all the pressure on hotel quarantines in major capital cities.
Some outbreaks had occurred following leaks from hotel quarantine staff being out in the community unknowingly infecitous.
But other outbreaks had occured when returned travellers had spent time in quarantine, tested negative and subsequently gone out in the community and been infectious.
Yet again other outbreaks had occured from hospital staff becoming infected.
In terms of distance Ipswich was 40 kilometres from Brisbane but also been part of a greater Brisbane lockdowns this year.
A recent lockdown in South East Queensland had seen cases spread as far as Byron Bay 165 kilometrest to the south and Gladstone 515 kilometres to the north.
So distance couldnt’ be the only factor here, available facilities, support and necessary staff and travel all had to be weighed up.
Furthermore it appeared these facilities were to augment not replace hotel quarantine.
Researchers at Griffith University in Queensland were working on an anti-viral drug which would seek out and destroy COVID-19 cells in an infected person’s lungs while leaving other cells unharmed.
The hope was the drug could be on the market in two years.
The vaccine rollout continued in Australia with vaccinations being opened up to the 2A Cohort. Anyone over 50 could now get the jab and the main jab available was the AstraZeneca one.
This had followed discussions at National Cabinet.
Politically it was commented that maybe with the vaccine rollout not going smoothly the Prime Minister had moved to more closely consult with state Premiers to achieve results and to also share any blame for failure to deliver.
Either way, with the decision to list Pfizer as the preferred jab for under 50s, the very rare examples of blood clotting being reported in media, and elements of the community that were fearful or against vaccinations – there was now a need to build momentum and confidence.
Sometimes I worry that people have become complacent over our good fortune here in Australia.
There are plenty of countries that avoided major outbreaks for some time before falling foul of the virus.
There was also talk about the need to open up borders and that would only be suitable once we got the majority of the population vaccinated.
So this was the next step and a step in the right direction.
Nearly 16 million doses would be part of 2A which was a cohort of six million Australians aged 50 to 69.
I knew that still not all of 1B had been completed which included people with disabilities and the staff at their centres.
Across the country people were lining up at vaccination hubs including people like the 53 year old recently re-elected Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan who rolled up his sleeve for the AstraZeneca jab.
In Melbourne there were waiting times for people who just rocked up on the day – some as long as two hours.
On Monday a new element to the India travel ban that had been announced on Saturday came into effect.
Any travellers who have been in India in the 14 days leading up to their date of arrival in Australia could face jail time of up to five years and a fine of up to $66,000.
Opposition MP Jason Clare suggested Christmas Island as a solution as had been done a year earlier with people returning from China but notably that was previous to the Howard Springs facility being set up.
At a National Cabinet meeting the and federal leaders agreed to opening up vaccinations to anyone over 50 in Australia.
Regardless of whether the older age groups had all been vaccinated.
The thinking was as more people got more vaccinated it might grow confidence for some to get vaccinated who were sitting on the fence.
Hence starting on 2A phase of those aged 50-69 before the rest of 1B had been completed.
There wasn’t a lot of coverage in the media at the moment but I can tell that not all those with disabilities or living in supported accomodation had received their vaccines yet.
Six million Australians would come under the 2A phase.
The Department of Health reported on April 14th, 2.3 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine had been produced in country and 714,000 received from overseas.
The changes would be potentially approved at the next National Cabinet meeting scheduled to take place on Thursday but had agreed in-principle to the changes.
The Prime Minister said National Cabinet still planned for GPs to be the primary way of dispensing vaccines to the populace but state governments would look to assist with mass vaccination sites.
Australia remained slow in getting its country vaccinated.
This had implications for opening borders back up going forward causing issues for trade and business but as the Prime Minister Scott Morrison noted, “The pandemic is raging. globally. It’s raging.”
Also being discussed was mass vaccine centre hubs in particular to when Pfizer doses arrived later in the year for under 50s to get vaccinated with.
There was also talk from the Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt about looking to set up an MRNA capacity here in Australia but it could take up to a year.
In India a surging new wave of cases and deaths continued in a country that was a major vaccine producer.
On April 19th, 2021 the World Health Organisation reported there had been 15,061,919 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 273,810. There had been 178,769 deaths with a daily increase of 1,619.
They had reported a million new cases in less than a week.
New restrictions and curfews were being put in place but the the wave was rising.
Sixty per cent of all vaccines were produced in India and the country was home to the Serum Institute of India which was the world’s largest vaccine producer.
They were a major player in the global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX.
But now India was in short supply of vaccines themselves.
While vaccines could only do so much now given the spread was happening it did raise questions about the competing priorities of India’s delivery of vaccines to the rest of the world and to its own people.
SII had also previously slowed down exports in January to prioritise the most vulnerable in India with vaccines. Those decisions did have impacts abroad particularly in Africa.
The world has never looked to produce vaccines on this scale in these timeframes.
The United States of America with the most number of reported cases and deaths in the world had placed a temporary ban on raw materials used for vaccine production. The European Union had also tightened restrictions around vaccine exports.
The two main vaccines in India were the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine also known as Covishield, and the Indian vaccine Covaxin made by Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
Their roll out began in earnest in January with health care workers and those highest at risk. They wanted to vaccinate 300 million people by August in a country of 1.4 billion people.
Covaxin had been rushed into service before third trial efficacy data had been released but initial vaccine hesitancy had been overcome.
Still only 14.3 million Indians had been fully vaccinated and now the pandemic was raging.
The capacity to have vaccinated the whole country in such a short time would not have been possible.
In Punjab last week there had been 450,000 doses of Covishield and 30,000 doses of Covaxin in a state of 27 million.
Other states had to suspend their vaccinations including the COVID ravaged Maharashtra which had also administered more than 11.1 million doses more than any other state.
Last week Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a meeting with state governors had praised the success of India’s vaccination efforts.
India had become the fastest nation to reach 100 million jabs in 85 days. America had taken 89 and China 102.
The Indian government moved to receive more vaccines the same week by fast tracking approval of vaccines already approved for use in other countries.
Wednesday and my Mum and Dad got their Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine.
This was a huge relief for me.
I am told that on the way to the centre they were a little nervous and decided to put on the radio for some music to distract themselves and a news bulletin about blood clotting came on and they promptly turned the radio off.
There were no side effects and they will get a second dose in three months time.
April 22
The Australian government announced a travel ban on all direct flights from India. That included Australians trying to return home.
312,731 new cases were reported in the country that day alone and there were now well over 2 million active cases in India at 2,291,428.
2,104 deaths had been recorded in a single day.
The death toll stood at 184,657.
One third of active cases in Australia have now orginated from returning flights from India.
The travel ban will started on April 27 and will last for two weeks until May 15 when a further decision will be made.
New South Wales was also going to have a major vaccination hub open by mid-May to delvier 30,000 doses a week.
April 23
Friday the week was coming to an end, a long weekend beckoned but perhaps appropriately on the eve of ANZAC Day the mood was sombre as Perth went into a three day lockdown, a boat with COVID cases docked in Australia and images out of India broke my heart. Just look at that masked woman at the end shaking as she cries.
A man in his 50s had flown into Melbourne on Wednesday and tested positive Friday morning. He had been in hotel quarantine for the required days then been out in the Perth Community for five days with a friend who had now tested positive.
Those 270 passengers on the flight into Melbourne would need to isolate for 14 days and were currently being contact by Victorian authorities.
Thirteen more people had tested positive in the Howard Springs quarantine facility in Darwin – all returned travellers from India in the past week. So they were deferring flights throughout May into June.
There were 18 more hotel quarantine cases in New South Wales, twelve of them returned travellers from India.
Channel Nine 9 News reported the Queensland Premier had written a letter to the Prime Minister calling for a two week freeze on any travel from India.
Thirteen out of fifteen Port Botany workers tested negative to COVID having boarded a tanker previously that had an outbreak of COVID on board.
The tanker Inge Kosan had travelled from Port Moresby and docked in Sydney on the 31st of March and then gone on to Vanuatu where it was detained with twelve cases on board and one death due to COVID.
But it was India that captured our attention. Well over a year into a virus that first impacted China in late 2019 had wrecked havoc but perhaps never on a scale like this.
It was heartbreaking.
Just when you think we might have seen the worst of this.
