Health minister says Australians 'on track' to get coronavirus vaccine from March

2020-11-11 12:40:33 GMT2020-11-11 20:40:33(Beijing Time) Sina English

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt has declared that they are "on track" to deliver coronavirus vaccines to Australians from March next year.

Hunt, who has repeatedly expressed optimism over a vaccine, welcomed the news that trials for a vaccine from two leading pharmaceutical companies show it to be 90 percent effective against the coronavirus.

Hunt and Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on November 5 that the government had signed an agreement to secure 10 million doses of the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech.

"I'm also delighted to announce that the Government has secured, as part of its agreement with Pfizer, full cold chain logistics distribution for the Pfizer vaccine," Hunt said in a press conference on Wednesday.

"We are on track to deliver vaccines to Australians, commencing in March of 2021. And that is I think extremely important news."

As of Wednesday afternoon, there had been 27,686 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia, and the number of new cases in the last 24 hours was eight, according to the latest figures from the federal health ministry.

New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, reported four new cases, all of which were reported in overseas travellers in hotel quarantine.

Victoria, the hardest-hit state by the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, recorded no new cases.

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