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Australia’s partnership with COVAX delivers vaccines to our neighbours
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Senator the Hon Zed Seselja, Minister for International Development and the Pacific
The COVAX Facility has started rolling out the first round of doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines to Australia’s Pacific and Southeast Asian neighbours.
The COVAX Facility, a global vaccine sharing initiative, has allocated an initial 1 million doses to the Pacific and 25 million to Southeast Asia. Delivery of doses has commenced, with Fiji, Cambodia, Indonesia and Philippines so far receiving vaccines. Other eligible countries are expected to receive initial doses by April 2021.
There is no higher priority for Australia and countries in our region than access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. The Australian Government is committed to working together with our neighbours to save lives, help economies reopen and ensure our region’s stability.
The COVID epidemic in Papua New Guinea has significantly accelerated, judging by the available reports of case numbers.
Since its first case was diagnosed 12 months ago, PNG has avoided a large number of reported cases and corresponding deaths. That situation has changed dramatically over the past fortnight. A crisis is now unfolding with alarming speed and the response must quickly match it.
As good as they are, these plans are unlikely to be fast enough to stop this current surge before enormous damage is done. There’s simply no time to waste in responding.
Why the urgency?
Reported COVID-19 testing rates remain critically low, with just 55,000 taken from an estimated population of nine million people. This means we don’t yet have a precise picture of the scale of the epidemic.
A catastrophe looms with PNG s COVID crisis miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.