Mr. Paul Reid:

I am not sure if the Senator heard what was said earlier on so I will try to be very brief. While acknowledging some of the issues that emerged last week, in fairness, relative to the almost 1,350 practices we have been working with over the three weeks, it was a smaller number of GPs who had issues but I acknowledge they have had them.

To respond to the Senator's specific question, the particular changes we have put in place include a new support centre we have put in place for GPs. As part of that, GPs from 1,350 practices will have dedicated account managers or relationship managers. Separately, we have put in a new communications process whereby there will be a weekly bulletin going out to GPs that will clarify the availability of supplies for the following week. This week, for example, communications went out to GPs on Saturday night to set out that the available quantity of vaccines next week would be 37,000. Based on all the numbers they returned to us of the 80 to 84 year-old groupings, we feel it is about 15% less than they may have listed because that is the supply we have for that week. I, therefore, expect it is giving them greater clarity in terms of planning for those vaccinations. Again, this is on the principle of equity in distribution.

There are new support centres, new weekly communications and new relationship managers. We have had three weeks of that programme, we have vaccinated more than 96,000 people who are mostly over the age of 80 and we have worked with 1,350 practices. The vast majority of those have gone according to plan but there were issues last week, which we have addressed and will continuously monitor.