PM brushes away blame for unvaccinated driver

One of Australia’s most respected health advisers has raised serious concerns a Sydney driver at the centre of the city’s coronavirus outbreak was not vaccinated.

An investigation into how the limousine driver was working while unvaccinated is underway after he contracted the disease before the Bondi cluster grew to 36 cases and raised national concerns.

Jane Halton, who the federal government chose to review quarantine last year, said the man should have been vaccinated and wearing a mask.

“I’m really, really, really disconcerted by this,” she told the Nine Network on Thursday.

“When I did my review of hotel quarantine last year and, to be fair, international crew were not part of the remit, I actually drew people’s attention when I debriefed them to this particular issue.

“I actually said that this was a potential hole and people needed to be very, very aware that these people and their transport arrangements had to be a high priority.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison denied the federal government was responsible for vaccinating the man after Labor put the heat on him in Question Time.

“What we’re seeing from the opposition is a deliberate attempt to try and politicise this terrible outbreak in Sydney,” he told parliament.

He said the state government was responsible for vaccinating quarantine workers and would investigate why the man hadn’t been immunised.

“The doses were available and in this case that worker was not vaccinated.”

Labor’s health spokesman Mark Butler said the prime minister ignored warnings from Ms Halton about a potential hole in the system.

“In response to that clear advice from the advisor he picked, he did nothing. He did nothing,” he told reporters in Canberra.

“So what the people of New South Wales are going through right now is a direct result of Scott Morrison’s stubborn refusal to do his job.”

Just three per cent of adults have been fully immunised against the deadly disease as borders shut and fears about a potential Sydney lockdown grow.

But the prime minister urged caution about focusing on the miserly number.

“That suggests if you’ve had a first dose, you have no protection. That’s just simply not true,” he told the Seven Network.

“It would be wrong for people to think the first dose doesn’t provide protection, because the scientific evidence shows it clearly does.”

About two thirds of people aged over 70 and about half of over-50s have received their first dose.

But Australia remains well behind other developed economies in rolling out the vaccine.

More than seven million doses have been administered nationwide.

AstraZeneca will likely be phased out of the rollout later in the year as Pfizer and Moderna take over as preferred vaccinations for younger people.

AstraZeneca is no longer recommended for people under 60 because of extremely rare but serious blood clots which have claimed two lives from more than 3.8 million doses.