The campaign to vaccinate the nation has reached an "inflection point", according to the lieutenant general in charge of the rollout, but he has warned it will take "hard work" to convince enough Australians to come forward to hit the crucial 80 per cent vaccine target.
From today, Australians aged over 12 will be eligible for either a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, a move aimed at getting the estimated 300,000 people aged over 60 years — who had been waiting for an mRNA shot — vaccinated.
Lieutenant General John Frewen said that, by holding out, those people had been "putting themselves at risk for many months" but he said vaccine supply was no longer an issue.
Australia is on track to receive more than nine million Pfizer and three million Moderna doses over the course of October, enough to fully vaccinate the population.
"It's an inflection point in the campaign where we go from the supply drivers to the demand drivers," Lieutenant General Frewen told the ABC.
"The challenge ahead of us, and there are many challenges, is about people coming forward.
New South Wales is just ahead of the ACT in the race to reach that first milestone, with the state set to hit 70 per cent vaccine coverage on Wednesday, just days ahead of the national capital.
Both locked-down jurisdictions are due to begin opening up shortly after achieving that target, in line with the COVID-19 exit strategy agreed to by National Cabinet.
However, vaccination rates in the relatively COVID-free states are lagging well behind.
In Queensland, just 46.7 per cent of people over 16 years of age have been fully vaccinated, just ahead of Western Australia, which has achieved 46.5 per cent vaccine coverage.
While jurisdictions dealing with Delta outbreaks have had vaccine supplies brought forward, Lieutenant General Frewen said complacency and hesitancy were also contributing to low vaccination rates in states such as Western Australia and Queensland.
"There are populations who haven't been in outbreaks yet and I stress to them that Delta moves fast and, when it finds a way, it will hit hard," he said.
Convincing those populations to get vaccinated will now become the focus of the campaign but Lieutenant General Frewen said there was still no firm plan to offer incentives to hold-out groups, instead relying on "choice, convenience and freedom" to motivate.
"At the moment, I think those things are working," he said.
While the Prime Minister was out of the country, New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory released their respective "roadmaps" out of lockdown, revealing what life would look like once the 70 and 80 per cent vaccine targets were met.
However, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk could prove to be the roadblock in the national re-opening, with both leaders refusing to commit to a date to reopen their borders.
Heading into National Cabinet on Friday, Tasmania's Premier, Peter Gutwein, is also remaining defiant, refusing to re-open the border until his state hits 90 per cent vaccine coverage, a milestone he says can be achieved in early December.
Lieutenant General Frewen said he wasn't aware of any country in the world that had achieved a 90 per cent vaccination rate but said it wasn't impossible.
"Is it possible? It's possible if people come forward," he said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has previously said it would be hard for state leaders to keep their borders closed, and Australians apart, once 80 per cent of their populations had been fully vaccinated.
"And, so, that puts a heavy, heavy responsibility on those who would seek to prevent that from happening," Mr Morrison said on Sunday.
