Mr Hunt, 55, released a statement revealing overnight testing confirmed his diagnosis to be Cellulitis, a bacterial infection in his leg.“The Minister is improving and will be discharged in the coming days and expects to be back at work next week,” the statement said.Mr Hunt’s office yesterday said he was being administered antibiotics and fluid.Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be acting Health Minister during Mr Hunt’s absence.Mr Morrison today said he had spoken to Mr Hunt and was confident he would be “fine by next week”.Trade Minister Dan Tehan spoke with the “vibrant, bubbly” Mr Hunt on Tuesday evening and said he was eager to return to work. “He (Mr Hunt) was the normal, vibrant, bubbly Greg, and he’s as keen to get back into work and get back to work,” Mr Tehan said. “It will obviously depend on the speed of his recovery. “He’s having a series of antibiotics and my hope is that he will be back with us next week.”The prime minister has insisted Mr Hunt’s condition has nothing to do with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine he received at the weekend.The Health Minister received his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Sunday alongside former prime minister Julia Gillard and Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy.Mr Hunt is the third Morrison government minister to go on leave in recent weeks, with Attorney-General Christian Porter and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds also on leave for medical reasons. ANGER OVER VACCINE PAYMENTS Doctors in revolt over COVID-19 vaccine payments and dose numbers have been told the situation will “settle down” as Australia ramps up its rollout.GPs have complained low payments and smaller-than-expected dose numbers will not cover their costs as they administer the vaccine.A group of GPs has threatened to withdraw from the vaccination rollout, some claiming they have received just 50 doses per week despite requesting 200 per day.But Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Karen Price said the COVID-19 vaccine was particularly “complicated” given it was administered in two doses and required staff training.She said many clinics planned their finances around receiving a high volume of doses but hoped the situation would “settle down” as the rollout progressed.“What has happened here is that we have got a low volume to start with,” she told Today. “This is really a way of testing procedures, making sure everything will go along OK.“So given it is the first week of the rollout and CSL haven’t got up to full speed ahead yet, I think it will settle down as we get going.”GILLARD GETS THE JABFormer prime minister Julia Gillard has received her COVID-19 jab in Melbourne as a show of bipartisan confidence in the vaccine. She received the AstraZeneca vaccine along with Health Minister Greg Hunt and Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy.Ms Gillard said she was “pleased get the vaccine” to support the rollout. She urged women especially to take up the jab when it was their turn. “I can understand that people might feel a little bit anxious,” Ms Gillard said.“I would recommend to them that they get information from reliable sources and by that I mean the Australian government sources or from their local health practitioner. “They will find the overwhelming evidence that this vaccine is safe and it is effective and here in Australia, it is free.”She encouraged women to “step forward and take it”.“It is the right decision for your own health, it is the right decision for your family’s health, it is the right decision for the community’s health, and ultimately it is the right decision for our nation and our world,” Ms Gillard said.Department of Health secretary Professor Brendan Murphy said there was “no evidence” either COVID-19 vaccine available in Australia was “harmful in pregnancy”.“So if someone has a vaccine and turns out to be pregnant, we don’t need to worry,” he said. “But we also don’t know for sure, we don’t have enough data to say that they are absolutely safe in pregnancy. “There is no reason why they wouldn’t be safe technically but we are recommending that people who are pregnant should discuss vaccination with their doctor before they consider it.”Mr Hunt said there have now been at least 270 residential aged care facilities vaccinated, with more than 23,000 elderly residents receiving their first jab of the Pfizer candidate. Across the country more than 81,000 Australians in the Phase 1a rollout, which includes priority frontline workers such as hotel quarantine staff, have also received their first dose. “This week, with the commencement of the AstraZeneca vaccine, those numbers will grow significantly,” Mr Hunt said. “In just over two weeks time … those numbers will grow even more. “We will soon be delivering well over 500,000 vaccinations a week, while making sure we have the contingency for second (dose) vaccinations.”Mr Hunt said there was also new data from the UK vaccine rollout published in the Lancet medical journal showing the AstraZeneca jab produced “100 per cent protection” against serious illness, hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 in clinical trials. “The results from the UK have been spectacular and heartening and wonderful for the world,” Mr Hunt said. Australia has ordered about 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, of which the majority have been produced locally by CSL in Melbourne, which means disruptions to supply chains are unlikely. The vaccine is also able to be transported at normal fridge temperatures, whereas the Pfizer jab must be maintained at -70C, and is therefore harder to distribute into rural and remote areas. DOCTORS TO HELP WITH VACCINE ROLLOUT Australia will enlist the help of more than 1000 GP clinics in its bid to keep its vaccine rollout on schedule.Local doctors will be brought in for phase 1b of the rollout, which targets older people and those with certain underlying conditions, from March 22.Health Minister Greg Hunt said the change would “ensure an efficient and equitable distribution of vaccines across the country”.Until now, the vaccines had only been administered at hospitals and aged care centres.Overall, more than 4500 accredited general practices will participate in Phase 1b of Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout which he says is one of the greatest logistic challenges in the nation’s history.“More than 1000 general practices will commence from the week of March 22, with a rapid scale-up over the following four weeks. This will ensure an efficient and equitable distribution of vaccines across the country,” Mr Hunt said.“Phase 1b of the rollout includes vulnerable populations, such as older people and people with certain underlying conditions.”National Vaccine RolloutThe strategy to rapidly deliver vaccine inoculations includes a collaboration between the Australian Medical Association (AMA), The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), and the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM).The rollout start dates are to be staggered with dosage allocation, to be dependent on vaccine availability. AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid said general practitioners (GPs) have a proven track record with flu vaccinations of older Australians and those living with chronic disease who would make up the majority of the Phase 1B rollout.“It is very pleasing to see the majority of GPs putting up their hands to participate in this critical national program,” Dr Khorshid said.TWO CASES CONFIRMED IN ACT The highly contagious South African COVID strain has spread to the ACT as Australia faces moves from Europe to block vaccine supplies.Health authorities have confirmed the ACT’s two active COVID-19 cases have the South African strain of the virus. The two travellers arrived on a repatriation flight from Singapore on Monday.They recorded weak positive test results while in quarantine but were later confirmed as active cases. A man aged in his 40s and another man aged under 20 contracted the South African variant, ACT Health confirmed.Meanwhile, the federal government remains well behind its initial COVID-19 vaccination targets nearly a fortnight into its rollout.Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in January he “anticipated optimistically” 80,000 Australians would be vaccinated every week at the beginning of the rollout, before the effort was “scaled up”.But almost two weeks after the first vaccine was administered, only 71,867 Australians have been immunised, including 20,814 residents across 241 aged care facilities.Health Minister Greg Hunt insisted mid-February the government remained “on track … for all the milestones we’ve set”, including a target to reach four million vaccinations by early April.In a further setback to Australia’s vaccination program, Italy has blocked 250,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine from being flown down under as the global tug of war over access to the jabs heats up.And France is threatening to block COVID-19 vaccines to Australia too, with French health minister Olivier Véran saying he “understood” the Italian government’s decision and indicated that France “could do the same”.“Believe me, the more doses I have, the happier I am as a health minister,” Mr Véran said, according to The Australian.He added that France and the rest of the EU are determined to have their contacts with drug makers enforced.The decision to stop the AstraZeneca roll out down under was an escalation in the competition for vaccines, one that has become ever more frantic as Europe confronts the early signs of a possible new wave of infections driven by new coronavirus variants.The prospect of shipping hundreds of thousands of doses from Italy, where infections are on a steep ascent, to Australia, which is recording a handful of daily cases, evidently proved unpalatable to Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Draghi, the New York Times reported. Italy took action under new European Union rules passed after AstraZeneca cut projected deliveries. They allow any member country to stop exports of vaccines to nations outside the bloc.Australia has reacted calmly, the Times said, with officials asking the European Commission to review the decision while insisting that the blocked delivery would not have a major impact.It is the first use of an export control system brought in by the EU to ensure sure big pharma companies would respect their contracts.The move, affecting only a small number of vaccines, underscores a growing frustration within the 27-nation bloc about the slow rollout of its vaccine drive and the shortfall of promised vaccine deliveries, especially by Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca.The ban came at the behest of Italy, and the EU did not raise objections to the tougher line Rome has adopted in dealing with vaccine shortages in the bloc since a new government led by Mario Draghi came into power Feb 13.Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it had anticipated veto problems could arise in shipments from Europe, adding that Australia’s inoculation schedule would continue as planned.“They are in an unbridled crisis situation. That is not the situation in Australia,” Mr Morrison said. “But, nevertheless, we have been able to secure our supplies, and additional supplies for importation, both with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, which means we can continue the rollout of our program.”He said Australia was also producing vaccines domestically, giving it control over its vaccination program.Italy’s objections centred both on the general shortage of supplies in the EU and on “the delays in the supply of vaccines by AstraZeneca to the EU and Italy,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.It said it also intervened because of the size of the shipment, more than 250,700 doses, that would go to Australia, which it did not consider a vulnerable nation.– with Darren Cartwright/NewsWire
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