COVID vaccination is changing

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From 1 October, COVID-19 vaccination in Australia stops being an emergency response and becomes an item on the schedule. The National COVID-19 Vaccine Program ends and COVID vaccines move onto the National Immunisation Program, bringing them into line with influenza, pneumococcal and everything else that runs on an age and risk-based eligibility table. The practical consequence is the one worth leading with. Funded COVID vaccination is no longer universal.

Five years of a universal program have set an expectation that the vaccine is simply free, and that expectation will walk into consulting rooms and pharmacies from October onwards. The eligibility rules are not complicated, but they are new, and the people most likely to ask about them are the ones who have been having a booster every six months without needing to check anything first.

Funded COVID vaccination is no longer universal.

The funded groups from 1 October are:

• Adults aged 75 and over, one dose every six months
• Adults aged 65 to 74, one dose every 12 months
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 to 74, one dose every 12 months
• Adults aged 18 and over with severe immunocompromise, as defined in the Australian Immunisation Handbook, one dose every 12 months

Everyone outside those groups can still be vaccinated. The vaccine remains available, it is simply no longer government funded, and the Department frames this as a private purchase following a risk-benefit discussion with the treating clinician. Two details are worth being clear on before that conversation rather than during it. The funded entitlement for severely immunocompromised adults is one dose per year, so additional doses may well be clinically appropriate but the funding does not automatically follow the recommendation. And NIP funding requires Medicare eligibility, where the current program covers anyone physically present in Australia including temporary visa holders. That is a cohort which has been vaccinated free for five years and now moves to private purchase regardless of age or risk.

There is a supply-side change too. Ordering through the Commonwealth Vaccination Administration System closed on 28 August, and COVID vaccines now move to routine ordering through state and territory immunisation programs alongside the rest of the NIP stock. Practices that have not yet moved their ordering process across will want to check what is on the shelf before the changeover rather than after it. The full provider update, including the Handbook definition of severe immunocompromise, is available from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.