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IN 1943, during the darkest days of World War II, senior army doctor Bill Keogh lobbied Australia’s war cabinet to establish domestic manufacture of a promising new drug, penicillin.
Military field trials of the new antibiotic, developed in Oxford by Australian pharmacologist Howard Florey and colleagues, had shown near-miraculous success in prevention and treatment of infection in wounded soldiers but supplies were scarce.
The government took Dr Keogh’s advice and the task of producing the drug in Australia was entrusted to then publicly owned pharmaceutical manufacturer CSL, where Keogh had worked before the war.
CSL veterinarian Val Bazeley was brought back from army service in New Guinea to lead the charge. Returning from a visit to US manufacturers in December 1943, Bazeley set himself a deadline of six weeks to get local production underway.
Ten weeks after Bazeley’s return from the US, CSL produced enough penicillin to save the life of a soldier with septicaemia, as described by infectious disease expert Professor Ian Gust.
Just two months later, in April 1944, Australia became the first country in the world to provide penicillin to its civilian population.
What, you might ask, has happened to us?
Writing about the COVID-19 pandemic over this past year, I have mostly held off from criticising our federal or state governments.
They, like all of us, have faced an unprecedented and unpredictable situation. Decisions have had to be made quickly and, inevitably, have sometimes proved to be wrong. Mistakes have been made.
The closure of our international border caused much pain, personal and economic, but was effective in protecting us from the pandemic. The expensive and much-hyped COVIDSafe app, on the other hand, didn’t deliver. But it’s easy to be wise in hindsight.
The bungled vaccine rollout, though, is a different level of failure.
Australia lags well behind most of the world in vaccinating against COVID-19, with just 6.48% of our population having received a first dose of vaccine as of last week, according to this Oxford University data aggregation site.
The rollout has been slow even for some of the people identified as most vulnerable, such as those in specialist disability accommodation, the ABC has reported.
The low overall vaccination rate here compares with almost 50% of the UK population and around 40% in the US, according to the Oxford data. Even India, with its far larger population and considerable logistical challenges, is ahead of us at 8%.
It’s true those countries face a greater imperative to vaccinate quickly given their burden of disease, but Australia appears to be at risk of squandering the advantage so far conferred on us by our geographical isolation and the swift closure of our international borders.
Our success to date may explain why Australia has lacked the motivation and effort to get its population vaccinated quickly, infectious disease researcher Professor Robert Booy told the New York Times last week.
“We need to recognise the complacency that’s building,” he said. “We’re just one super-spreading event away from trouble.”
It’s hard to understand how things can have been allowed to get to this point. As the various vaccines against COVID-19 were being developed last year, it should have been obvious it would be unwise to put all our eggs in one basket.
The accelerated development of the vaccines combined with massive global demand meant problems were pretty much bound to occur, whether those were supply issues, unexpected side effects, or effectiveness issues, including against new viral variants.
To manage those risks, most countries with the means to do so made deals with multiple manufacturers. Australia to a large extent did not, pinning its hopes on a single vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca.
On top of that, little was done to boost the domestic technological or manufacturing capacity that might have helped to assure supply in this and future infectious disease outbreaks.
The federal government poured more than $100 billion in stimulus money into the economy to stave off a pandemic-initiated downturn.
This was a good and necessary move, but a disappointingly small amount of the funding went to projects that will deliver lasting benefit to the nation.
Given the level of debt this will impose on all of us for decades to come, it would have been good to see more focus on building national assets and less on subsidies for private home renovations.
Last week, we finally saw an announcement that Victoria would move to establish manufacturing capacity for mRNA vaccines.
This new technology is the basis of the COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna. While there are still some issues to be ironed out, such as storage constraints, mRNA vaccines offer the major advantage of being able to be designed or modified more quickly than adenovirus vector vaccines like AstraZeneca’s in response to new diseases or variants.
Given this technology is likely to be central to future management of infectious disease, and that the current pandemic has exposed the risk of relying on imports during a health crisis, it’s worth asking why this did not happen in 2020, and why it has taken a state government to do it.
As we saw with the catastrophic bushfires of 2019–20, it has mostly been state governments who have done the hard yards during the pandemic.
They’ve made mistakes, of course – the Ruby Princess in New South Wales, mismanaged hotel quarantine in Victoria – but by and large what we have seen is Premiers and their teams working tirelessly, making difficult decisions and facing the criticism when things went pear-shaped.
The federal government in contrast has often seemed more focused on making announcements – who can forget the repeated claim that we were “at the front of the queue” for COVID-19 vaccines – than on actual delivery.
We should expect more from our elected representatives. Time perhaps to bring back the spirit of 1943.
Jane McCredie is a Sydney-based health and science writer.
The statements or opinions expressed in this article reflect the views of the authors and do not represent the official policy of the AMA, the MJA or InSight+ unless so stated.
Jane,
thank you for mentioning Percival Landon Bazeley ( Val ) and the work that he did at CSL for the production of penicillin. He was also instrumental in the work with Jonas Salk and the introduction of the polio vaccine. both game changing events in the lives of everyone today. It is interesting to reflect on those times and the response of the government and the persons involved and compare it to todays situation. I have been doing some family research into Val Bazeley and it is a fascinating story especially in light of our current situation. I only hope that one day someone will right and proper account of his life and work.
Unfortunately, a bit like climate science, COVID vaccination has become politicised, used as an ideological lever to criticise governments and push social agendas. There remain confusing and conflicting messages from bureaucracies, governments and the media. Public health doctors we had previously never heard of are the new gurus, fronting the media on a daily basis with varying degrees of competence or comfort in doing so. Two classes of vaccine have emerged, first class ( Pfizer) to be given to the young and second class ( AZ) to be used for the old; while this may be erroneous, it is clearly the public perception and perception is everything. This has resulted in poor vaccination uptake in the older population who are most at risk of serious illness. Doctors asking for vaccination indemnity does nothing to reassure the public. Best approach is to incentivise vaccination eg you cant travel outside of your State or country without it, less restrictions on vaccinated populations. etc
A well-summarised article. Also, I especially take note of the comments of infectious disease researcher Professor Robert Booy, as reportedly told the New York Times last week. namely:“We need to recognise the complacency that’s building,”. “We’re just one super-spreading event away from trouble.”
In the light of those comments, let me throw these thoughts into the mix- I wonder if the ongoing passionate debate over need for, and requisite levels of, “herd immunity levels” may be resolved, not directly by our Governments, but, in fact, within the travel and holiday marketplace. Clearly, interstate and overseas carriers have a vested commercial interest in not allowing unvaccinated people potentially put their income and consequent risk of closure, at risk. Hopefully, super-spreader events won’t occur, but , nevertheless, holiday accomodation facilities would, in my view, may be likely to adopt the same policies for the same commercial reasons!
Could you please report the research looking at the adverse effects of the vaccines – not just VAERS data (50,861 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines, including 2,249 deaths and 7,726 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and March 26, 2021). I need help interpreting and applying this information clinically. Apart from acute reactions like thrombocytopenia, what other vaccine-related injuries might we see emerging after 6 months? A year? 2 years? Antigenic priming? autoimmune disorders? e.g:
* Herpes zoster following BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccination in patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases: a case series. Victoria Furer, Devy Zisman, Adi Kibari, Doron Rimar, Yael Paran, Ori Elkayam. Rheumatology, keab345, https://doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/keab345.
* Research Article ISSN 2639-9458
“COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”
J. Bart Classen, MD* Microbiol Infect Dis. 2021; 5(1): 1-3.
Classen Immunotherapies, Inc., 3637 Rockdale Road, Manchester, MD 21102, E-mail: classen@vaccines.net.
The level of complacency and ineptitude by the Commonwealth government is an absolute disgrace and could well cost its succession in future elections. The other problem is the continued return of Australians from overseas COVID-19 infected countries being placed in inappropriate accommodation in the middle of heavily populated areas such as Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne instead of opening up Commonwealth facilities designed for quarantine. I also believe that 14 days is too short a period for adequate removal of the virus being transmitted.
Hotels were not designed with positive plenum systems and can never be used to prevent transmission of respiratory disease.
Jane – My father, John Francis Funder, a pathologist who during the war worked at CSL for the Army, was also initially involved in the penicillin production. He was a friend and protegee of Bill Keogh, whom I remember fondly. Bill was equally a driving force in getting VicHealth off the ground: a remarkable man.