Sky News – quarantine, vaccine

Monday, 15 February 2021

TOM CONNELL, HOST: As you can see on your screen standing by to go is the Health Minister Greg Hunt for a vaccine update. I’m going to tempt fate and begin a panel as he is due to begin talking. Amanda Rishworth and Julian Simmonds join me here in the studio. Thanks both for your time. Labor has been talking a lot about getting Australians home. Daniel Andrews is talking about reducing hotel quarantine, it must be disappointing.

AMANDA RISHWORTH, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT:  What’s disappointing is that the Prime Minister has sat on his hands and done nothing. He has had the Halton report now for over six months, it is his responsibility. So I’m not surprised Premiers are getting fed up with the lack of Federal intervention here.

CONNELL: But they’re not all, I mean New South Wales is keeping up at 3,000 a week without any issues seemingly.

RISHWORTH: There have been many lockdowns as a result of COVID-19 escaping from hotel quarantine. Adelaide, Perth, Victoria. You’ve got a significant problem here that the Prime Minister refuses to address. Where are the Federal facilities?

CONNELL: One case, a lockdown and people said “did you really need to do that”? That’s it. I mean, it’s not a significant problem. Overall hotel quarantine is –

RISHWORTH: Well it is a problem when you have to lock a State down because it escaped from hotel quarantine. People are very concerned about this issue. And we need the Prime Minister to take some action on this, take some responsibility.

CONNELL: We’re going to hear on the vaccine today. Worth mentioning that we were meant to be front of the pack, among the first. 170 million have been rolled out across the world, nobody’s rolled up their sleeve yet in Australia. Not front of the pack are we?

JULIAN SIMMONDS, LIBERAL MEMBER FOR RYAN: What we’re making sure is we’re making sure we step through this in a very safe and logical way and the TGA has. Unlike other countries where they’re in a tough situation, they had to do emergency approvals. We haven’t had to do that. That’s a wonderful luxury to have had, that we can assure Australians that these vaccines is safe, they’ve gone through the same rigorous testing as any other vaccine. And now that the vaccines are coming on shore, they’ll go through another process of TGA testing to make sure that the supply chain has been correct, they are safe for Australian. So that when Australians do roll up their sleeve, which will be the very near future I think Greg Hunt is going to tell you, that it’s the safest as it possibly can be.

CONNELL: Well he’s here right now, let’s go live to Greg Hunt the Health Minister.

ENDS

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