Suggestions Australia should fast-track a COVID-19 vaccine to ringfence current outbreaks in NSW and Victoria are dividing infectious diseases experts.

Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly has spent several days fending off calls to fast-track approval of a pandemic vaccine, saying that, unlike the US and UK, Australia doesn’t have a legal mechanism for ‘emergency authorisation’.

“To be very clear, emergency approval is very different from a regular, standard full approval,” he told reporters on Saturday.

“We don’t have that process. We don’t have an emergency here in Australia.”