Richard Marles isn’t the only Labor leader doing the media rounds this morning.
Health Minister Mark Butler attended the ABC’s RN breakfast earlier, explaining why Australia took a while to announce it had procured smallpox vaccines.
Mark Butler, Minister for Health and Human Services. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Just over 20,000 monkeypox vaccines (out of a total of 450,000 doses assured) will arrive in Australia in the coming days.
“They were very hard to get like you [can] imagine,” Butler said.
“Monkey pox has only really been endemic in countries in Africa. And in the last 13 weeks we’ve seen it spread to 76 other countries, particularly in North America, and the UK and Europe. But we also have 58 cases here in Australia.
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“So there’s been a flurry of activity by governments to get their hands on the new third-generation vaccine, which is what we have. Now we’re just one of a very small list of countries that supplies will arrive in 2022.
“We’ve been talking to state governments for weeks about how they would put them in place.”
The Health Minister added that approximately 100,000 more doses would arrive in Australia over the “next two months”.