Richard Marles isn’t the only Labor frontbencher doing the half rounds this morning.
Health Minister Mark Butler was on the ABC’s RN Breakfast earlier, explaining why it took a while for Australia to announce it had acquired monkeypox vaccines.
Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler. Credit:alex ellinghausen
More than 20,000 monkeypox vaccines (from a total of 450,000 secured doses) will arrive in Australia in the next few days.
“These were highly difficult to get hold of, as you [can] imagine,” Butler said.
“Monkeypox has only ever 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 have 58 cases here in Australia as well.
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“So there’s been a burst of activity by governments to get their hands on the newest third-generation vaccine, which is the one we’ve got hold of. We’re now only one of a very small list of countries that has supplies coming to us in 2022.
“We’ve been talking for weeks now with state governments about how they’d roll them out.”
The health minister added that another 100,000 doses would arrive in Australia in the “next couple of months”.