The slow vaccine rollout is now making international news, with the BBC reporting Australia has fallen 85 per cent short of its vaccine delivery goal. The BBC story reports Australia has fallen 3.4 million doses short of its target of delivering four million COVID vaccinations by the 31st of March.
The Morrison government has angered the states with figures that emerged in a News Corporation story. It cited federal government figures suggesting New South Wales had distributed 96,273 doses of the 190, 610 doses supplied by the Commonwealth.
New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard described the report as misleading and offensive.
And Queensland's Deputy Premier Steven Miles described Mr Littleproud's remarks as an outrageous and an orchestrated attack on the states.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has now praised the states and territories saying they are doing a first-class job but he's also criticised Queensland for stockpiling vaccines.
"We have confidence in all of the states and territories and they're all managing the programs as they best see fit and they're working towards making sure all of those vaccines are used. There's only one state that I was aware of that was holding back any second doses and that's been made very clear to Queensland since early February that the Commonwealth holds the contingency, that's a matter for them but all are working towards the 12 week plan which was last updated and provided in mid-March and so I think what we see is that we need to keep this in the perspective of an extraordinary acceleration in the rollout, a massive number of people who have now been vaccinated."
For the second year running, Bryon Bay's Bluesfest has been cancelled because of the pandemic. Festival organisers have previously indicated they would try to re-schedule Bluesfest if it was cancelled by a public health order.
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