SYDNEY, Australia (CU)_A leading scientist behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has warned Australia against delaying its rollout, following the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology’s call on Canberra to pause its planned rollout of the vaccine, claiming that it may not be effective enough to generate herd immunity to the virus.
Responding to this call, Professor Andrew Pollard said the focus should be on how effective the vaccine is in preventing serious illness or death induced by COVID-19, rather than achieving herd immunity.
He noted that nowhere in the world has any country achieved herd immunity without having high levels of vaccine coverage. “Having a supply of vaccines today and getting them into people’s arms is what will save lives. That to me has got to be the absolute focus,” he said.
Although the Australian government has agreed to purchase 53.8 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, subject to approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), however, some experts cite trials which have found the vaccine to be 62 per cent against COVID-19, in comparison to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are said to be about 95 per cent effective.
Responding to these claims Professor Pollard said the impact of a vaccine could only be determined “when they’re in people’s arms.”
“The one hard bit of data we have for all the vaccines is that people who are vaccinated do not end up in hospital from COVID-19 and we’ve seen that consistently from our trials,” he added.
Meanwhile, Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly on Wednesday (Jan 13), dismissed calls to postpone the rollout, which is set to begin in mid-February.
According to latest figures updated by the Department of Health, Australia has reported 28,658 COVID-19 infections and 909 fatalities since the beginning of the pandemic, and within the last 24 hours, the number of locally acquired cases remained at zero, while 10 cases were acquired from overseas within this period.
