Just get the jab
Both vaccines ‘ safe’
AUSTRALIANS are set to be offered COVID- 19 vaccinations at least a fortnight sooner than expected and the message from expat Aussies who have already received it is: don’t hesitate to get the jab. Health workers living overseas urge a quick take- up.
BOTH vaccines Australians will receive are effective against the coronavirus and so safe the nation’s immunology experts can’t wait to get them.
“I will take either vaccine and be very happy for my family to have it too,” Menzies Health Institute infectious diseases expert Professor Nigel McMillan said.
“Both vaccines are safe, with only very minor reactions such as one in 100 people getting a mild headache,” he said. “Put that in context; one in 2000 people has an allergic reaction to Panadol.”
Australia has ordered 10 million Pfizer BioNTech vaccine doses and 50 million doses of the Oxford University AstraZeneca vaccine to be produced here by CSL. Production of the AstraZeneca vaccine began in December.
“The sooner we roll them out the sooner we can get back to normal,” Prof McMillan said. “But that could still take months.”
Both vaccines require two shots a couple of weeks apart to be effective but differ in technology, price and storage.
The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine was developed by Ugur Sahin and his wife, Ozlem Tureci, the children of Turkish migrants to Germany who started BioNTech in 2008.
He became alarmed at the potential of the virus in January and realised his work could provide a vaccine.
“There are not too many companies on the planet which have the capacity and the competence to do it so fast as we can do it,” he later said.
“So it felt not like an opportunity, but a duty … I realised we could be among the first coming up with a vaccine.”
The vaccine gives the body the genetic code to fight the virus. It costs about $ 25 a dose and must be stored below minus- 70C, making transport difficult and expensive.
Prof McMillan said: “It has been injected into four million people in the US and only four have had an allergic reaction. That’s not too bad.”
The Oxford University AstraZeneca vaccine was developed by Professor Sarah Gilbert and her team at Oxford’s prestigious Jenner Institute, who were already working on a universal flu vaccine. She worked on vaccines for ebola and Middle East respiratory syndrome using the same technology.
The vaccine uses a protein to trigger an immune response to the COVID- 19 virus using long- established techniques proven safe.
As soon as Chinese scientists published the genetic structure of the virus, Prof Gilbert’s team went to work.
“We were quick,” Oxford colleague Prof Teresa Lambe told the BBC. ” Over the weekend, the vaccine was pretty much designed. We went pretty fast with it.”