When will we be back to normal?
Perhaps before Christmas - Christmas, 2021, that is.
The federal government has agreements with five suppliers of vaccines if their trials go according to plan and if the Therapeutic Goods Administration then passes the vaccines as safe and effective.
If all goes well, vaccination could then start earlyish in the new year. The TGA's head, Professor John Skerritt, said recently that he believed his organisation would be in a position to approve one or more vaccines by the end of January or the beginning of February.
So no vaccination is likely before then - and probably not until a little later: "Our advice remains that the timeline for a decision on approval is expected by the end of January, 2021, and our planning is for first vaccine delivery in March, 2021," the Health Minister Greg Hunt said.
Vaccine availability
According to the Department of Health, the 10 million doses of the front-runner from Pfizer "will be available from early 2021". They'll be made overseas but Australia has an option on more doses.
The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University has had some glitches. The government says: "If the Oxford vaccine is successful:
- 3.8 million doses will be delivered to Australia in early 2021
- 30 million doses will be manufactured in Australia between from early 2021 in monthly batches through to September 2021 in monthly batches. CSL will manufacture these doses on behalf of AstraZeneca.
Because the Oxford vaccine is likely to need two doses, 16 million Australians will be in the first batch of people to be inoculated. A company in Melbourne is already making it.
Who will be first in line?
In Britain where vaccination has started, the population has been divided into groups by age or vulnerability. The first to be inoculated are frontline health staff, people over 80, and care home workers. Younger people will then be inoculated from the oldest down.
The government in Australia hasn't gone into the same detail but its stated top priorities are:
- Those at increased risk of exposure, such as health and aged care workers.
- Those with a higher risk of developing serious disease "including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, older people and people with underlying select medical conditions".
- People working in essential services "required for societal functioning".
How will it be done?
With a lot of effort, probably at the end of a global logistics mobilisation unlike any other in peace time. Different vaccines, for example, need different conditions for transporting and cold storage.
In Australia, GPs and nurses will do the vaccinating, mostly at clinics but also in aged care homes.
Vaccination of health-care workers could take place at their work.
More nurses are to be trained for a huge national effort stretching from cities to the most remote areas.
"GPs will be used as they are already delivering most immunisations at the moment for the general community. We will need to establish specific teams to go into aged care facilities to immunise the staff, but also the residents," the Secretary of the Department of Health Brendan Murphy said.
That may start in March and take a month because a second jab will be needed. Other groups of people would then follow through the winter.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said: "The expectation is that everybody who sought vaccination would be vaccinated well within 2021."
On this likely schedule, the coronavirus may be vanquished in Australia towards the middle to end of next year.
But some health warnings
Time-scales are (obviously) estimates so things may move faster or slower than currently seems likely.
On the up side, the development of the vaccine has moved much faster than anybody could have dreamt, so perhaps its deployment will move quicker than forecast. But, on the other hand, the federal government has indicated it wants to be ultra-cautious.
And we don't know quite what the different vaccines can do. They may be more effective for some groups than for others.
Nor is it clear if they protect people from getting infected or just from getting the disease. Might they just ensure that some infected people don't get any symptoms? People who were infected but not ill from the infection could still pass the infection on. All that will become clear only with time.
How normal is normal?
To most of us, life seems pretty normal already. We skirt around people in the supermarket but Australians have escaped the lockdowns and chaos of Europe and the United States.
But there are still some restrictions - seats in the cinema are spaced. There are still limits on numbers in restaurants and sports stadiums. Crowds are verboten. The economy is being propped up by government spending.
The likelihood is that the affected businesses could start operating as normal from the early winter onwards.
But true normal means open borders
The first step is likely to be an opening of the border to New Zealand - but both governments are cautious. Other destinations, such as Singapore, may follow.
But there will not be open borders while COVID-19 remains out of control in the United States, Europe and Brazil, in particular.
Qantas' chief executive, Alan Joyce, is adamant that nobody will fly on a Qantas plane without vaccination. He wants some sort of global digital certificate where a passenger's vaccination status would be checked on check-in. The World Health Organisation is looking at how such a system might work.
Mr Joyce has expressed pessimism about services to the United States and Europe resuming before the end of 2021.
Normality by Christmas.
That's Christmas, 2021, and maybe not even then.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
