The Greens say that halted shipments of Astra Zeneca vaccines from Europe show the risks of relying on international supply chains to inoculate Australians, extending their call for the government to establish a publicly-owned vaccine production centre.
\nNews of a quarter of a million doses due for Australia being blocked has exposed the risks caused by the privatisation and winding down of Australia\u2019s domestic vaccine production capabilities over decades.
\n\u201cAustralia can\u2019t be reliant on imports from big drug companies, hoping that the supply chain isn\u2019t disrupted in a global pandemic,\u201d Bandt said
\n\u201cWe need to make sure that people here are rapidly vaccinated, and that we\u2019re able to play our role in supplying vaccines to the Pacific.
\n\u201cWe need a publicly-owned mRNA vaccine manufacturer in Australia.
\n\u201cScientists and health experts have backed the Greens call for Australia to build its own domestic mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity.
\nWe are calling on the Government and Labor party to accept this needs to be done now. \u201cIn addition to suring up supply of the Astra Zeneca vaccine, Australia\u00a0needs to develop domestic mRNA technology which is easier to adapt to new strains of Covid-19. \u201cWith publicly-owned domestic manufacturing capacity, we won\u2019t just be able to make sure that everyone here is inoculated against new pandemics as they come, but we\u2019ll be a vaccine production hub for the region.\u201d
\nGreens spokesperson on Health Senator Rachel Siewert said:
\n\u201cThis difficulty with international supply chains is a clear example of why the Government should have already started building a more diverse vaccine portfolio.
\nWe don\u2019t want to go down the ugly and dangerous road of vaccine nationalism.
\nIf Europe continues with the approach of banning exports of vaccines they risk extending the pandemic because no one is safe until everyone is safe.
\nAustralia should commit to increasing its funding to the COVAX AMC to at least the level of Canada (an additional $135.2m USD).
\nThis could also include calling on big pharma to temporarily waive intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines to facilitate universal access.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Greens say that halted shipments of Astra Zeneca vaccines from Europe show the risks of relying on international supply chains to inoculate Australians, extending their call for the government to establish a publicly-owned vaccine production centre. News of a quarter of a million doses due for Australia being blocked has exposed the risks caused … Continue reading “BLOCKED VACCINE SHIPMENT MAKES THE CASE FOR DOMESTIC PRODUCTION”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}