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A "very dangerous" thunderstorm has lashed large parts of Queensland, dropping five-centimetre hail, generating 70km/h winds and collapsing the ceiling of a Sunshine Coast shopping centre.

Leah Whittaker was shopping with a friend in Kmart Maroochydore just before 6pm when she heard the rain intensify and then the hail start battering the roof of Sunshine Plaza.

An alarm sounded before they heard a "cracking noise" from the ceiling.

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"The next thing the whole roof just like caved in, in that one section," she told 9News.com.au.

"And then it was like the roof boards collapsed."

Piping, wires, a light dangling down and "what looked like dirt or something" came through the roof before the water started bucketing down and the 22-year-old pulled out her phone to start filming.

"It just kept getting worse and then another collapse happened closer to the front door, which wasn't as bad but it was like a lot of water gushing out that looked like it was going on the registers," she said.

Eventually, the shock gave way to a brief moment of genuine fear as Ms Whittaker and her friend, both worried the rest of the ceiling would start to cave in too.

"Everyone just had their hands over their mouths like 'what the hell is happening?'," she said.

"It was so loud. The noise was insane.

"It was only raining for maybe a minute, max, and then you heard the hail hit the roof and it was just in little bits and sections.

"Then all of a sudden it just sounded like the roof was getting smashed, like so hectic.

"Me and my friend were standing right next to each other and we were screaming at the top of our lungs just trying to talk to each other it was that loud."

Hairdresser Kelsey Hill was in Kmart at the same time, closer to the registers at the front of the store.

She saw a little bit of water start leaking from the ceiling and started filming.

"Not even 10 seconds later, the whole thing just a metre away for me just completely caved in," she told 9News.com.au.

"Honestly, I just I didn't really know what to do. I was like, there's just water everywhere.

"The ceilings down. There's wires everywhere. Like 'what's going to happen now?' Is it gonna start fires?"

Both women said they didn't see anyone injured and that the store was safely evacuated.

Severe storms had earlier lashed inland areas like Esk and Toogoolawah before moving toward Brisbane where as much as 10-25 millimetres of rain hit within half an hour on Wednesday.

The storms passed out to sea away from Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast throughout the night.

Weatherzone meteorologist Joel Pippard told 9News that gusts of 72km/h had been recorded at Wellcamp near Toowoomba.

Golf-ball-sized hail hit in Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport and Helidon, west of Brisbane, yesterday.

Further south, storms are forecast for the next few days.

Sydney can expect showers and a late thunderstorm today, with the weather warming up to 22C.

An earlier severe weather warning of heavy rain and flash flooding for the NSW South Coast has now been cancelled.

While Melbourne will remain dry today, rain will hit the city from tomorrow, with minor flood warnings in place for Victoria's Bemm, Cann and Genoa Rivers, East Gippsland, parts of West Gippsland and the Snowy River.

Adelaide is heading for a sunny 17C and will also see showers tomorrow and Friday.

Perth will also see a morning shower today, with a mostly sunny Thursday, before a cloudy weekend.

Cairns will also see showers and a possible storm, but a top of 30C.

COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna has announced a deal to supply 25 million doses to Australia, 10 million of which would be delivered this year.

The United States-based biotechnology company announced the deal on Wednesday night, along with revelations it was already in discussions with Australia about potential local manufacturing.

Moderna's vaccine uses the same mRNA technology as the Pfizer jab and has performed broadly similarly in drug trials to date.

While not approved yet in Australia, it has generally been listed for use in adults of all ages in countries that have rolled it out.

"We appreciate the partnership and support from the government of Australia with this first supply agreement for doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and our variant booster candidates," said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. 

"As we seek to protect people around the world with our COVID-19 vaccine and potentially our variant booster candidates, we look forward to continuing discussions with Australia about establishing potential local manufacturing opportunities."

The Australian government is yet to make any comment on the deal.

The deal, to supply 10 million doses of Moderna's original COVID-19 vaccine this year and 15 million booster shots next year, is subject to the Therapeutic Goods Administration approving both jabs, which Moderna will soon seek.

The Federal Budget, handed down on Tuesday, included an extra $1.9 billion over five years for vaccines, including millions to spur local development of mRNA vaccines similar to Moderna's and Pfizer's.

The Victorian government had previously announced $50 million in funding to spin up local manufacturing of the promising vaccine technology, which Melbourne lab CSL doesn't have the capability to make.

Moderna's statement on potential local production is a promising boost to those ambitions after BioNTech, the German company partnering with Pfizer, announced this week it would set up a new factory in Singapore.

Moderna added that it had already announced plans to open a commercial subsidy in Australia this year.

About 2.8 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Australia to date but the rollout has been plagued by delays, much of that driven by supply issues but also over concerns about extremely rare blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca jab.

Those concerns resulted in health authorities in Australia recommending it only for those over 50, a similar approach to that taken across much of Europe.

Neither of the mRNA-based vaccines, developed by Moderna and Pfizer, have been similarly age-limited.

Including the Moderna announcement, Australia has agreements to buy almost 200 million vaccine doses, enough to vaccinate the population almost four times over. That includes 40 million doses from Pfizer a bit more than 50 million from AstraZeneca, 51 million from Novavax and 25 million through the global COVAX initiative. The vast majority of the AstraZeneca and all of the Novavax jabs are to be produced onshore.

Many vaccine manufacturers are considering booster shots as an option to protect against emerging variants amid concerns some, particularly the one first detected in South Africa, may be able to evade some of the protection bestowed by vaccines.

A panel of independent experts who reviewed the World Health Organisation's response to the coronavirus pandemic says the UN health agency should be granted "guaranteed rights of access" in countries to investigate emerging outbreaks, a contentious idea that would give it more powers and require member states to give up some of theirs.

In a report released on Wednesday, the panel faulted countries worldwide for their sluggish response to COVID-19, saying most waited to see how the virus was spreading until it was too late to contain it, leading to catastrophic results.

The group also slammed the lack of global leadership and restrictive international health laws that "hindered" WHO's response to the pandemic.

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Some experts criticised the panel for failing to hold WHO and others accountable for their actions during COVID-19, describing that as "an abdication of responsibility."

Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University said the panel "fails to call out bad actors like China, perpetuating the dysfunctional WHO tradition of diplomacy over frankness, transparency and accountability."

The panel was led by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who were tapped by WHO last year to examine the UN agency's response to COVID-19 after bowing to a request from member countries.

"The situation we find ourselves in today could have been prevented," Johnson Sirleaf said.

Beyond the call to boost WHO's ability to investigate outbreaks, the panel made an array of recommendations, such as urging the health agency and the World Trade Organisation to convene a meeting of vaccine-producing countries and manufacturers to quickly reach deals about voluntary licensing and technology transfer, in an effort to boost the world's global supply of coronavirus shots.

The panel also suggested the WHO's director-general — currently Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia — should be limited to a single seven-year term. As it stands, the WHO chief is elected to a five-year term that can be renewed once.

The suggestion to limit the tenure of WHO's top leader appeared in part designed to ease the intense political pressure that WHO director-generals can face.

Last year, the Trump administration repeatedly railed against the agency's handling of the pandemic — taking aim at WHO's alleged collusion with China.

An Associated Press investigation in June found WHO repeatedly lauded China in public while officials privately complained that Chinese officials stalled on sharing critical epidemic information with them, including the new virus' genetic sequence.

Ms Clark said the global diseases surveillance system needed to be overhauled — with WHO's role strengthened.

"WHO should have the powers necessary to investigate outbreaks of concern, speedily guaranteed rights of access, and with the ability to publish information without waiting for member state approval," she said.

Sophie Harman, a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the panel's recommendations were unlikely to be entirely welcomed by WHO's member countries, and thus, unlikely to be implemented.

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"Which states would actually allow WHO in to investigate an outbreak without their permission?" she asked.

Many doctors fatigued after treating COVID-19 patients said any reform of WHO should include an evaluation of its ability to properly assess the science of an emerging health threat.

David Tomlinson, a British physician who has been campaigning for health workers during the pandemic in the UK, said WHO "failed on the most fundamental aspect" in its scientific leadership of COVID-19.

He said WHO's failure to acknowledge that much coronavirus transmission happens in the air has "amplified the pandemic."

WHO has said coronavirus spread can happen in limited circumstances in the air but recommended against mask-wearing for the general public until last June.

Clare Wenham, a professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, said the report overall was good, but questioned its support for the UN-backed program for coronavirus vaccines called COVAX, which relies on a "donation" model.

Of the millions of COVID-19 vaccines administered to date, developing countries have received just 7 per cent, WHO said this week.

"(COVAX) is not addressing one of the main problems, which is we need to rapidly ramp up production of the vaccines and distribution of vaccines," she said. "And it's still working on the model of a finite number that's only able to be produced by a certain few manufacturing locations."

Overall, she suggested politicians needed to budge more than technical institutions like WHO.

"The problems aren't technical. The problems are political," Professor Wenham said.

"The problems are about like: How do you get governments to behave and think about things beyond their own borders?

"I don't think that has been resolved."