The ‘big thing’ which must change for Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout to run smoothly

A vaccine expert says there’s “one big thing” that Australia hasn’t yet realised, but which will be key to rolling out COVID-19 vaccines successfully across the country.

Senior vaccine adviser at UNICEF Australia, Christopher Maher, who has spent his life fighting polio overseas, says there are three pillars to any vaccine rollout program — supply, ability to delivery vaccines, and community engagement and uptake.

“The first one is vaccine supply and that’s the one we’ve struggled the most with in Australia,” he told Ross and Russel.

But Mr Maher says when supplies do increase Australia will still struggle to rollout the vaccine program if “one big thing” isn’t acknowledged.

“One big thing to get into everyone’s head … is it’s got to be more than the government just doing this,” he said.

“It has to be an alliance between government, agencies like UNICEF for example, not-for-profits, civil society and private enterprise.

“We’ve got to involve the corporates as well as communities.

“There’s a lot of corporates who are very, very interested in this. They’ve got a stake in it.”

Press PLAY below to hear Mr Maher’s assessment of Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout