Australia has rejected calls to buy the highly-regarded, one-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine to replace the scrapped AstraZeneca rollout.
The country s vaccination plan was thrown into chaos when a link to a rare blood clotting was discovered in the AstraZeneca jab.
Anyone under 50 is now advised against getting it and states are refusing to administer it unless the patient already had their first shot.
The government was in talks last week with Johnson & Johnson and manufacturer Janssen, which asked for approval for its vaccine from Australia s medicine regulator.
Federal Health minister Greg Hunt has ruled out proceeding with the purchase at this stage because it is too similar to the AstraZeneca drug - which raised fears over blood clotting in a small number of cases
Australia has ruled out buying Johnson & Johnson's highly-regarded one shot Covid vaccine because of similarities to the AstraZeneca vaccine - but there's another reason it's not in our rollout plans.