It is expected to take many more months to vaccinate enough people to achieve an effective level of protection against coronavirus in Australia.
The vaccine rollout will happen in five priority stages.
The vaccination program is slated to start in late February, but the Federal Government has acknowledged delivery or production issues could delay it until early March.
The TGA has also granted a provisional determination to Oxford/AstraZeneca, as they did for Pfizer/BioNTech before its vaccine was approved.
A provisional determination is the first step in the approval process, but doesn’t necessarily mean the vaccine will ultimately be approved.
This allows the TGA to get a head start on going through clinical data from the various stages of trials from those vaccine manufacturers.
At the same time, the TGA says it is “actively monitoring” the efficacy and safety of these vaccines as they are rolled out in other countries first.
