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No Moderna access for general practice in 2021
Ten million doses of the mRNA vaccine will be prioritised for pharmacies and workplace vaccination programs, the Department of Health has said.
Moderna will not be offered by general practices this year, with the focus on transitioning to deliver more Pfizer. (Image: AAP)
Despite there being no obvious barriers to general practices administering Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, GPs will not be receiving doses of Australia’s third available vaccine candidate this year.
‘Planning is underway for the 10 million Moderna vaccine doses that will be delivered in 2021 to be rolled out through approved pharmacies and through workplace vaccination,’ a Department of Health (DoH) spokesperson told newsGP.
‘In 2021, general practices will be delivering the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.’
The revelation comes after it was announced on Monday that the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) had provisionally approved Moderna for use in Australia in those aged 18 and over.
RACGP President Dr Karen Price, who met with the Head of the National COVID Vaccine Taskforce Lieutenant General JJ Frewen on Thursday, said the decision to distribute the mRNA vaccine through pharmacy makes sense when it comes to streamlining the rollout.
‘The idea is that it’s nice and streamlined from a signalling point of view that Moderna’s at pharmacies and Pfizer’s at general practice,’ she told newsGP.
‘It helps with distribution, it helps the logistics, and it helps with messaging.
‘Eventually it may change, but at this foreseeable time – as we’re onboarding and really maturing the vaccination rollout – it’s really important to get that early messaging right.’
The Federal Government secured a contract for 25 million doses of Moderna in May, and earlier this week Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed that the first 10 million are expected to arrive before the end of the year.
‘The first one million doses [are] on track to arrive next month,’ he said. ‘Then we will have three million in October, three million in November and three million in December.’
During a COVID-19 webinar for general practice on Thursday, the DoH’s First Assistant Secretary for the COVID-19 Primary Care Response, Dr Lucas de Toca, reiterated that Moderna will be rolled out through the community pharmacy program.
When it comes to general practice, he said the DoH is ‘aware and very pleased’ by the demand to join the rollout of Pfizer and that the focus is now on ramping up onboarding of clinics.
‘More than 1500 general practices are … doing Pfizer vaccines across the country, with another 280 joining on next week,’ Dr de Toca said.
‘We expect that the next tranches will commence the transition from mid-September so that by early October all general practices that are in the program have been given the option to vaccinate with Pfizer.’
Dr Price said she looks forward to GPs increasingly stepping up in the rollout of Pfizer, and that any clarity around timelines is welcome.
‘We’ve been feeding back that that certainty is needed, and the Department has listened and is working very hard on that,’ she said. ‘So I’m hopeful that will come through.’
Dr de Toca did say, however, that while efforts are being made to get doses out to general practices as quickly as possible, ongoing supply issues remain.
‘We absolutely hear that … the sooner that you have a date for when you can commence, the better, and we’re committed to be able to do that as quickly as we can,’ he said.
‘We don’t tell any practice when they can commence and how many doses they can get until we are absolutely certain that we can maintain that supply, so that we can give you and your patients certainty that that supply may increase or may remain the same, but it will not drop.
‘[That] sometimes means it’s a bit later than we would like in order to communicate with you. But there will be a lot of communication coming out next week, and we’ll go through that as quickly as possible so that everyone is doing mRNA on top of adenovirus vaccines by October.’
Moderna, which requires two doses administered four weeks apart, is under review by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), which will develop clinical guidance ahead of the September rollout.
Dr de Toca said ATAGI is also assessing available evidence for use of the mRNA vaccine in younger cohorts aged 12–17.
‘We expect that they will come to a conclusion on that in the next few weeks,’ he said.
Meanwhile, the remaining 15 million doses of Moderna secured by the Government will be an updated variant booster and are anticipated to arrive in 2022.
Dr Price said while it has yet to be confirmed, the prospect of booster programs means general practices could be offering other vaccines beyond Pfizer and AstraZeneca in the future.
‘That’s certainly a place where we might eventually land,’ she said.
‘The whole system has to be recalibrated all the time, depending on what’s coming in our shores, both from a viral point of view from variants and from a vaccination point of view.
‘But it’s just too complex to be really going down that path right now. At this stage, in this important part of getting things established and getting clarity and maturity around the messages and the supply chains and so forth, keeping it this way helps reduce the complexity in an already complex environment.’
To date, more than 14.2 million COVID vaccine doses have been administered across Australia. More than half have been delivered by primary care, with more than 300,000 doses administered the past two days, a record since the rollout commenced.
Dr Price said it is important to remember that all healthcare professionals involved in the rollout are united and working towards the same goal.
‘This is a public health rollout; there’s no other ifs, ands, or buts,’ she said.
‘We are a part of the delivery arm of that and we should be working together both as health professionals in the community and as a community with the Australian people that we see every day.
‘We’ve got to be delivering that same message and it’s vital that we do it because it is a public health crisis first, middle and last.’
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