© Dean Lewins/AAP PHOTOSHealth Department boss Brendan Murphy says Australia can afford to take its time with the vaccine.
A top health bureaucrat has defended the pace of the nation's coronavirus vaccine rollout, arguing that Australia's lack of community transmission allows time to be taken.
More than 100,000 vaccines have now been administered, which is lower than initially promised for the third week of the rollout.
"This is not a race," Health Department boss Brendan Murphy told reporters on Wednesday.
"We have no burning platform in Australia. We are taking it as quickly and carefully and safely as we can.
"We are not like the US or the UK or most other countries in the world where they have got people in hospital dying."
The government remains confident Australia is on track to have offered every adult at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by October.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Professor Murphy, the former chief medical officer, visited the medical regulator's headquarters in Canberra to witness batch testing of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Mr Morrison said one quarter of the 100,000 vaccines administered had been to the most vulnerable Australians, namely those in aged and disability care.
Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines from overseas are currently part of the rollout, with locally made doses of the latter option to be given to Australians from March 22.
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Professor Murphy said recent data out of the UK had shown both vaccine options were on par, after initial studies showed Pfizer was more effective.
"We have two vaccines that are indistinguishably effective," he said.
"We have two brilliant vaccines, really brilliant vaccines, much better efficacy than the flu vaccines we get every year."
Business is looking to the success of the vaccine rollout as a beacon of hope for restrictions across the country easing.
Qantas boss Alan Joyce has warned tourists and students could abandon Australia if border closures remain a long-term plank of pandemic proofing.
He believes Australia could lose investment if travel restrictions remain a key part of responding to the virus.
"The travellers will go elsewhere. The students will go elsewhere," he told the Australian Financial Review's business summit.
The Qantas chief executive said the Australian public must be conditioned to move away from a zero-case goal as the pandemic rolls on.
The influential CEO also reiterated his support for a world health passport system, saying countries will require vaccination proof to allow people in.
"We already do it with yellow fever," he said.
Mr Joyce wants an end to inconsistency between states, a two-day warning before borders shut and a timeline for border restrictions to end during the vaccine rollout.
He also raised a vaccine check for pubs and restaurants with similar measures raised by some industry figures.