GIFT OF THE JAB
While the “magic number” for herd immunity is unclear, the vaccine rollout is good news for Australia’s recovery
How the vaccine rollout will improve our lives
February 22, 2021 will go down in Australian history as VAC (Vaccine Against Covid-19) Day (although the prime minister, Scott Morrison, the chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, and 84-year-old aged-care resident Jane Malysiak received their gift of the jab a day earlier).
Two days short of 13 months – the first official coronavirus case in Australia was confirmed on January 25, 2020 – the vaccine has landed.
With the exception of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists – who make up 1.5% percent of the Australia population, according to Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton – most people welcome the vaccine’s roll-out.
The Melbourne Institute’s Taking the Pulse of the Nation survey, carried out on February 1-6, 2021, found that “about two in three Australians are willing to be vaccinated and of these, two in three are willing to wait so those with higher risk get vaccinated first. Of the one in three who don’t want to be vaccinated or are unsure about the Covid-19 vaccination, 65% express concerns about side-effects while 37% express disbelief in the effectiveness and/or distrust the vaccine.”
That’s about quite right. Informal get-togethers (er, drinking sessions) with friends and families reveal the same sentiments of hope, anxiety and hesitation.
But in line with other leaders of the world who got the first jab, our prime minister declares: “This is a historic day for Australia … This vaccination program launches us down our path out of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. Today is the beginning of a big game changer, there’s no doubt about that. Its successful rollout will only further reduce the risk, and when you reduce the risk, then obviously you do not need more blunt and extreme measures.”
The Australian Financial Review newspaper reported that “about 170,000 frontline healthcare, quarantine and border workers will be the first to receive vaccinations from Monday [February 22] in stage 1A of the rollout, with more than 500,000 aged and disability care residents and staff” – adding up to a total of 678,000.
About 60,000 Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine doses were expected to be administered to priority groups by the end of the first week.
Phase 1B will see up to 1.48 million administered to 6,139,000 Australians; Phase 2A to another 6,570,000; Phase 2B would inoculate another 6,643,000; with some 5,670,000 in Phase 3.
If all goes according to plan, that’s more than sufficient to cover all of the country’s population of 25.7 million.
Water, water everywhere but not all want to drink. While there are enough vaccines to go around, only 66.2% of us are willing to be vaccinated, according to the Melbourne Institute survey.
If the survey translates into actual takeup, it won’t be good enough to generate herd immunity. That’s when a sufficient number of people are vaccinated to prevent the virus from spreading.
Quoting Marylouise McLaws, University of NSW professor of epidemiology, healthcare infection and infectious diseases, on ABC News, it is difficult to identify the “magic number” needed to achieve herd immunity, but if three out of five vaccines administered were AstraZeneca and the rest were Pfizer, then at least 75% of the population need to be jabbed. This number may even go up to 90%, depending on variant strains.
Given this, we aren’t out of the woods yet. Then again, given Australia’s low infection rates relative to those in other countries, decreasing rates worldwide and the roll-out of vaccines in a growing number of nations, Australia’s VAC Day adds another layer of protection against the pandemic – herd immunity or not – and onwards onto a return to pre-coronavirus normal.
Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe puts the outlook succinctly: “While the path ahead is likely to remain bumpy and uneven, there are better prospects for a sustained recovery than there were a few months ago.”