After China, Australia was the second country in the world to roll out a population-based pandemic vaccine program, with monovalent pandemic vaccine available by 30 September 2009 [44] . The first wave of the pandemic in Australia had ended by this date. It was not expected that the vaccine would have been available in time to modify the first pandemic wave anywhere in the world. However, even in Australia, it was a case of 'too much too late'. An early estimate of 18% was made for population wide coverage for the vaccine [45] .