Australia is going into winter with about 15% of the population having at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The low vaccination rates will make us more vulnerable to outbreaks and delay us opening our borders to other countries. Interestingly, in the US, incentives are at play to speed up the vaccination rate. For example, in Ohio there is a COVID-19 lottery with five prizes of $1 million dollars, free beers are available in New Jersey and West Virginia is giving out $100 savings bonds for each person under 35 vaccinated. Some companies are offering an additional 2 days sick leave (in case the employee has a vaccination reaction) and a company not well known for health, Krispy Kreme, is offering a free donut every day for the rest of the year.
Australia’s COVID vaccination rate is the little red worm in the chart above. We have started late and are slowly catching up. As of the 25nd of May, over 3.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been delivered in Australia which means we are tracking a little better than the world average. At our current pace of roughly 500,000 doses a week, we will complete the 40 million doses needed to fully vaccinate Australia’s adult population in October 2022.
One wonders if we could have been more like the UK, who have over 50% of their population or the US with over 45% of the population with at least one dose of the vaccine.
Part of the Australian strategy is to roll out COVID-19 vaccinations via General Practice. The remuneration to GP’s for a COVID-19 vaccination has been fixed to the Medicare rebate for a short consult of under 6 minutes plus the bulk billing incentive and this comes to a total payment of about $30. Six minutes may be reasonable for a trusted and well understood vaccination such as the influenza, but not if you need more than six minutes to explain the well publicised clotting issues of the COVID vaccine.
Mass vaccination hubs are able to achieve high throughput, but general practice will be needed as well, especially for those with vaccine hesitancy. If we are aiming for about 80% coverage is $30 per vaccine the optimal payment to achieve success? Personally, I reckon additional incentives would assist General Practice to speed up our vaccination rate. At the moment there is no financial incentive for General Practice to put more resources into COVID vaccination. Can we afford to pay more? If we paid GP’s $10 more than they are paid now, this will add an extra $100 – $200 million to deliver the first COVID vaccine dose and another $100 – $200 million for the second dose. This is expensive but so is putting a capital city into lockdown for 3 days. The travel agency, Flight Centre estimated the cost of the three day lockdown in Brisbane in late March at between $1 – 2 billion. Government Job Keeper subsidies have cost Australia $90 billion, and our deficit last year was a record $180 billion.
Increased financial incentives for vaccination could prove to be good value.