The Federal Government has released details about this season’s influenza vaccination program, with GP fridges expected to be stocked by mid-April.

Australia will be the first country to offer an adjuvanted quadrivalent influenza vaccine to over-65s rather than the enhanced trivalent vaccine available last year.

And as announced in August last year, previously state-funded flu vaccinations for children aged six months to under five years will now be federally funded under the NIP.

It will be important for vaccine providers to get vaccines “into arms” as soon as possible because of the novel threat of circulating SARS-CoV-2, says infectious diseases physician Professor Allen Cheng from Monash University.