New government data shows Victoria administered nearly half of the country’s AstraZeneca vaccines, while New South Wales received more doses of Pfizer through its primary health network in August than Victoria and Queensland combined.

The release of Operation Covid Shield data comes amid a new round of wrangling between states and the Commonwealth over the national immunization program, with allegations the Commonwealth has favored NSW over the following his Delta epidemic.

Following Lieutenant General John Frewen’s promise that the Commonwealth would pursue a “transparency bias” for immunization data, the department released a detailed breakdown of how Pfizer and AstraZeneca were distributed through state and government government channels. federal government since deployment began in February. .

The numbers show the success of the Victorian government’s state-run clinics in administering AstraZeneca, with the state accounting for 824,000 doses of AstraZeneca out of 1.8 million nationwide – about 45% of the total.

NSW, on the other hand, administered just 320,000 doses of AstraZeneca in state clinics, or about 17% of the total, and well below its population share of about 32%.

Figures show the other states roughly match their population share, with Queensland at 14%, Western Australia at 11%, South Australia at 8%, Tasmania at 3% and the Territory North and ACT at 1%.

The federal government has previously criticized NSW for its low use of its AstraZeneca allowance, saying its unused allowance was stored or sent overseas.

Vaccine order rates – which show how much of what’s offered is actually used – show NSW has the lowest order rate for the AstraZeneca vaccine at just 26% of its allocation, compared to 77% for Victoria.

In Queensland, where state public health official Jeanette Young has criticized the AstraZeneca vaccine, the order rate is only 37%.

Most of the nationally administered AstraZeneca vaccines have passed through the Commonwealth’s Primary Health System, with a total of 11.6 million doses distributed.

For the Pfizer vaccine, however, the numbers paint a very different picture, with state order rates ranging from 94% for South Australia and the Northern Territory to 100% for Victoria and Queensland.

While Pfizer has been shipped to states and territories for use in state-run centers roughly in line with population share, numbers show huge discrepancies in numbers sent through the primary care network. of the Commonwealth.

This includes GP offices, Indigenous-controlled health organizations, and Commonwealth vaccination clinics, where vaccines are ordered directly from the Commonwealth two weeks before supply.

According to data, NSW has received 1.15 million doses out of the total of 2.7 million delivered through this network since the start of deployment, around 43% of the total, and more than Victoria (562,452) and Queensland (509,322 ) combined.

Figures show Western Australia received 217,200, South Australia 127,140, ​​Tasmania 36,210, Northern Territory 31,914 and ACT 36,270.

The bulk of the extra doses to NSW were delivered in August, when the state received a total of 711,054 Pfizer injections, compared to just 308,610 in Victoria via the primary health network.

It was these doses to the GP Network that sparked the ire of Victorian Prime Minister Daniel Andrews this week when he accused the Commonwealth of having a “national plan to vaccinate Sydney” and of making a secret deal with NSW to direct more vaccines to the state.

“It was done without anyone knowing and they got caught,” Andrews said on Tuesday.

The government defended the additional allocation to NSW, arguing that it had advanced certain doses in response to the outbreak, and the state also benefited from an additional 530,000 doses obtained under the Polish deal that did not did not harm other states.

Figures show that in June, clinics in Victoria state received more doses of Pfizer than NSW, with 448,110 in the state, compared to 400,140 in NSW.

Operation Covid Shield said it had allocated additional doses to the NSW Primary Health Network after the decision to commission 260 additional GP practices, and would do the same for other states this this month.

“To balance the advances to NSW, the integration of primary care sites in other jurisdictions will be accelerated in September to significantly increase the points of presence for the Pfizer vaccine and additional doses will be provided to these sites,” said a spokesperson this week.

This will coincide with the arrival of additional Pfizer vaccines from the UK and Singapore, and the inclusion of Moderna vaccines in the program from the middle of this month.

The latest vaccination data shows that a total of 21,539,586 doses of vaccine were administered, with a daily increase of 294,000 on Tuesday.

This means that 39.7% of the eligible population over the age of 16 is now fully vaccinated and 64.6% have received a single dose.