Vaccination rates may have peaked: what Scott Morrison does next is critical

Credit where it’s due: the Commonwealth has stepped up to the plate in recent months, doing the leg work to secure additional vaccine doses at any cost, as it should have all along. Millions of additional doses from Poland, Singapore and Britain have given the rollout the shot in the arm it needs – so much so that soon supply will outstrip demand.

But the risk now is that the government rolls out the “mission accomplished” banner, passing the buck to Australians to turn up for a jab. In fact, the government’s role is far from over, and what it does next is every bit as critical as anything that came before.

Not helping matters is our current national obsession with specific vaccine targets which seems to have created a false impression of a finish line at 80 per cent vaccinated (either of the population or those over 16, depending whom you ask), beyond which we can all take a seat, relax and enjoy the summer. Indeed, worryingly, the Prime Minister himself this week described 40 per cent of those eligible (around a third of the population) as the “halfway mark”.

In fact, there’s no such finish line. The only thing we know for sure is more is better – the higher the vaccination rate, the less likely an outbreak will occur and the less severe it will be if it does occur. When Australia gets to 80 per cent of those eligible (around two-thirds of the population), we won’t have won the race, we’ll have qualified for the final. Winning the race requires doing all we reasonably can short of physically pinning people down.

The government’s vax tsar, Lieutenant-General John Frewen, said this week: “Supply isn’t the great challenge now. It really is about people coming forward.” But, of course, the government is yet to announce any policies – besides a decidedly lacklustre ad campaign – to encourage them to do so. This is despite the fact that vaccines are a textbook example of an externality, the solution to which is incentives to drive take-up.

To date the lack of incentives hasn’t mattered much because of significant initial demand and constrained initial supply. But as Frewen says, the imbalance is righting quickly. While our vaccine supplies have been accelerating, our rate of getting jabs in arms has actually begun to flatline in recent weeks. Indeed, without further action our daily jab rate may already have peaked. We’ve been overtaken by New Zealand, and they’re running much faster.

This has little to do with extreme anti-vaxxers, but a lot to do with ordinary folks who procrastinate, are too busy with work or caring responsibilities, or who are simply hesitant. In a recent survey, only 12 per cent of Australians said they weren’t willing to be vaccinated, while 10 per cent said they were simply unsure. While the former might be hard to move, the latter certainly aren’t. The question is how best to do so.

Of concern is that we’re now running into what we’ve called the “vaccine passport paradox”. When more people get vaccinated, case numbers fall, which is good news. But it also reduces the incentive to get vaccinated. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian this week previewed a range of freedoms for the vaccinated from next month – but how much longer until they’re extended to everyone anyway?