UK and Australia agree to share vaccines to tackle global pandemic

UK and Australia to share four million Covid-19 vaccine doses with each other to enhance rollout of life-saving jabs.

The UK and Australia will share Covid-19 vaccine doses to benefit each other’s life-saving vaccine rollout programmes, the government has announced.

The UK will send four million Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to Australia to rapidly enhance their vaccination programme, with the first batch of 292,000 doses due to be shipped shortly. Australia will return the same overall volume of doses before the end of the year.

Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid said, “Vaccines have built a strong wall of defence in the UK and we want to support nations around the world in recovering from Covid-19 and improving access to vaccines.

“Our agreement with Australia will share doses at the optimum time to bolster both our countries’ vaccination programmes.

“By working with international partners to coordinate the rollout of life-saving vaccines, we will protect more people from this awful virus and save lives,” he added.

The arrangement is “mutually beneficial” and will ensure these Pfizer/BioNTech doses – which are not immediately required in the UK – are used to support international vaccination efforts.

“Sharing doses will mean Australia has access to vaccines they can put to use in their domestic campaign immediately and will enable the UK to better align timings of our own supply of vaccines with our future need including for any booster programme or expansion of vaccines to teenagers, pending final advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation,” the government said.

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