Australia Will Get 25 Million Doses of the Moderna Vaccine Pending TGA Approval

Jab 3.0.

Australia’s coronavirus vaccine rollout officially started this year and while it hasn’t exactly been the smoothest ride so far, we are still in the beginning stages so there’s likely some good stuff to come.

Included in that list of ‘stuff’ is the introduction of other or new vaccines that aren’t already being distributed here, like the Moderna vaccine.

Currently, Australia only has approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to administer the AstraZeneca and Pfizer COVID vaccines, but soon that could change.

This week, Moderna—a pharmaceutical company that has created an mRNA vaccine—announced that they are working with the Aussie government to provide us with 25 million doses of the jab.

So far, their plan is to see one million doses arrive in Oz by September and then another nine million by December.

Moderna has also labelled their vaccine as effective against the “ancestral strain”, which is essentially the OG version of COVID.

Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt also confirmed the deal on Thursday morning and discussed the benefits of being able to manufacture mRNA vaccines like Moderna and Pfizer’s right here on home soil.

The only problem: it hasn’t yet been approved by the TGA, which means even if there are 25 million doses here, they’re not allowed to start distributing them until they can be confirmed as safe by Aussie standards.

Moderna is currently in the process of submitting an application to the TGA so fingers crossed everything goes to plan.

The introduction of a third vaccine is good news considering there have been some links between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clotting within people under 50.

As of right now, the Moderna vaccine is approved—and being distributed—in the UK, Canada, the European Union, the US and Singapore.

While the new vaccine is designed to defeat the initial version of coronavirus and not the multiple mutations, Mr Hunt has confirmed that Moderna will continue to upgrade the vaccine to work against other variants.

When will young Aussies get it? It's probably too hard to tell at this stage. 

It’s expected that all approved vaccines will become available to anyone under 50 sometime later in the year, but that will all depend on whether or not all over 50s are vaccinated quickly enough.

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