As it happened Australia COVID LIVE updates: Victoria enjoys first weekend out of lockdown as COVID-19 vaccine first doses pass 90 per cent

ATAGI will meet this coming week to discuss and potentially recommend COVID-19 booster shots.

Deputy chief medical officer Michael Kidd said on Saturday that Pfizer has submitted documents for the ATAGI to consider.

Professor Kidd reiterated that Australians who have had two doses of a vaccine were fully-vaccinated and had a very low chance of becoming seriously ill with the virus and the booster shots would firstly be targeted at those who first recent COVID vaccines like elderly Australians and health care, aged care and high-risk jobs.

Third doses are already available for people 12 and older who are immune-compromised or had sub-optimal immune response to the original two doses, Professor Kidd stressed booster shots were a separate issue and could be offered to everyone as time goes on.

“The Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation are now considering booster doses for all those who have been double vaccinated,” Professor Kidd said on Saturday.

“This has been considered for everyone once six months have passed since you received your second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

I need to emphasise that if you have had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, you are fully vaccinated, and you are already very well protected against becoming severely unwell if you are infected with COVID-19.

It is now six months since you received the second dose of your COVID-19 vaccine, there is no reason to the anxious, but I do recommend that if boosters do become available, that you present for your booster dose when it’s your turn.”.

And if booster doses are approved, we will be one of the first countries in the world to commence a widespread booster program.”.

Professor Kidd said the government hopes to begin its booster shots program on November 8 if there are no delays in approval.

“Unvaccinated employees will not be allowed to return to the workplace unless they have tested negative for Covid-19 before returning to the workplace, and they will need to pay for the costs of these tests,” the government said in a statement on Saturday.

New Zealand reported 104 new coronavirus infections on Saturday, including the first community case of the virus in the country’s South Island in nearly a year, health officials said.

The risks of a further spread from the case reported in Blenheim, in the north east of the South Island, remained low, health officials said, with the person likely in the late stage of infection.

Once the poster child for stamping out COVID-19, New Zealand has been unable to beat an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant of COVID-19 centred in Auckland, forcing Ardern to abandon her elimination strategy and switch to living with the virus.