Former prime minister Kevin Rudd contacted Pfizer chairman and chief executive Albert Bourla directly at the end of June to see if anything could be done to expedite the delivery of vaccines to Australia.
The bringing forward of millions of Pfizer vaccine doses last week followed a back channels intervention eight days earlier by a high-powered network which included a senior business figure despairing of the government's failure to secure enough vaccine supplies, and a former prime minister.
The revelation comes amid continuing controversy, and conflicting reports, about delays and shortcomings in Australia's vaccine supplies, and why Australia is currently only contracted for 40 million Pfizer doses this year. In late June, senior Australian business figures based in the United States had discussed making contact with the vaccine manufacturer Pfizer to see whether it was possible for Australia to get earlier access to larger supplies of the Pfizer vaccine as the COVID-19 Delta variant emerged in Australia.
Health Department officials have flatly denied many of these reports, but the businessmen in the US who had connections with Pfizer were hearing even more graphic accounts of how badly offended the company had been by the response to its early approaches to Australia last year when it offered access to what is now to be a crucial part of our vaccine coverage.
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