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Health Minister Greg Hunt says he wants every Australian to have access to a vaccine over the course of the year.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

“They are our foundation of a booster and variant strategy,” Mr Hunt said on Thursday morning. “Moderna is,on the advice that we have,the most advanced of the vaccine products with relation to the capacity to adapt to booster or variant requirements.”

Moderna revealed late on Wednesday night it had struck a deal with the Commonwealth to supply 10 million doses in the latter half of this year and 15 million in 2022.

The government set aside millions of dollars in the federal budget to create the ability for Australia to manufacture mRNA vaccines,a new vaccine technology that is used in Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines but could have wider applications in the future.

That capacity will take time to build,with Department of Health secretary Brendan Murphy saying it would be up and running “some time next year”.

“It’s a technology we need to have,” he said.

Professor Murphy said it was vital for Australia to be prepared for variants to the coronavirus and the Moderna deal provided extra diversity and redundancy in the country’s vaccine arsenal.

“The evidence,as you all well know,is that this virus has shown some variance over the course of the last year,” he said. “We do need to be prepared.”

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler questioned why it had taken so long to strike a deal with Moderna when other countries signed deals last year.

“Why do Australians have to wait till the end of this year? What happened to Scott Morrison’s promise that Australians would be at the front of the vaccine queue?” he said.

Science and Industry Minister Christian Porter will announce the start of an approach to the market for mRNA production onshore.

Mr Hunt said the government hoped to have at least one if not more mRNA manufacturers in Australia. CSL,which is manufacturing 50 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Melbourne,had told the government it was considering whether it could move to mRNA vaccines as well,he said.

The company pitched itself as a potential manufacturer on Wednesday,saying it was a “proven pandemic partner to Australia”.

“We look forward to continued collaboration with the government on how mRNA vaccine technology might be delivered to Australia,” a company spokeswoman said.

Biotech company BioCina,which has a base in South Australia,also said it had the ability to move to mRNA manufacturing.

“With reasonable financial support from government to add key capabilities and expand capacity,[we] can within months be producing key ‘ingredients’ of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to address the current global shortage,” BioCina chief executive Ian Wisenberg said on Wednesday.

Asked about the federal budget assumption that a “population-wide vaccination program is likely to be in place by the end of 2021”,Mr Hunt said he wanted every Australian to have access to a vaccine over the course of the year.

Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine would be the main option in the last quarter of the year,with three weeks between doses,he said.

“Everybody who has taken the vaccine before about the 10th of December will have completed their vaccine in this year,their second dose,” he said.

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