Australian children aged five and under could be in line to receive a Covid-19 vaccination within a matter of weeks, the federal government has confirmed, as tests begin on a combined shot for flu and coronavirus.

The health minister, Mark Butler, said the Therapeutic Goods Administration was considering an application from the drug maker Moderna to allow its vaccines to be given to children aged from six months to five years old.

“If it is approved by the TGA, that will then go to our advisory group on vaccines to consider the way in which this should be rolled out to the community, so I’d expect it to be a matter of some weeks,” Butler said in Canberra on Tuesday.

Earlier he told ABC radio it would be “unthinkable” not to hold a royal commission into the nation’s pandemic response.

“The amount of money spent, the death, the dislocation,” he said. “We know a very long tail of mental and physical distress will be coming our way over the next couple of years. It would be unthinkable not to have a very deep look at how we responded to that and learn the lessons.”

Any inquiry needed to be carried out over the next three years, he said.

Australians will have access to a single vaccine for Covid-19, influenza and the respiratory virus RSV by 2024, Moderna has announced

The company’s chief medical officer, Dr Paul Burton, said the combined shot was in the early testing stages, with trials to start later this year.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Burton said combined vaccines would be key to fighting respiratory diseases in the aftermath of the pandemic, and to adapting to multiple strains within one season.

And Australia’s multibillion-dollar mRNA manufacturing hub will be bigger than initially expected. The first of its kind in the southern hemisphere, the facility was announced by the Morrison government as part of an agreement with Moderna.

Finding a location had reached its final stages and a site would be announced in a few weeks, said Moderna’s Australia general manager, Michael Azrak.

“It’s taken a little bit longer than we anticipated because we’re actually going to be building a larger facility than we anticipated,” he told Sky News.

The pharmaceutical giant aimed to break ground on the Victorian site before the end of the year and be operating by the end of 2024, subject to approval by the medicine regulator.

Post Source Guardian