Senator, health chief clash on vaccine value

AUSTRALIA’S chief medical officer has dismissed a Liberal senator’s stance on vaccines, saying “the science” shows they decrease transmission of Covid.

Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick had asked Paul Kelly about whether giving children aged five to 11 the Covid vaccine was safe enough based on clinical trials, given they were less likely to get ill or die from the virus.

“Don’t you think there needs to be more evidence (about the safety),” Senator

Rennick asked in a Senate inquiry into Australia’s Covid response.

Professor Kelly said more than 22,000 children had contracted Covid since the start of the year in Australia.

“The severity, there’s no doubt, is less in younger people,” he said, noting 1.4 per cent of those cases were admitted to hospital.

But Prof Kelly said the disruption to school had been significant and that children were known to transmit the virus. He said they had been cautiously watching what was happening in the US, where five million children had received the vaccine.

“That’s a substantial sample size and they have been following very closely for vaccine side-effects and have not found anything at all severe,” he said. The US had only recorded four cases of myocarditis – an inflammation of the heart muscle – in those children but they were all mild and short lived, he said.

Senator Rennick then said the vaccine had not stopped transmission. “We know the Omicron variant came to Australia through vaccinated arrivals,” he said. “Vaccinated people transmit the virus as well, so I don’t necessarily buy into that.”

He then said Prof Kelly citing the effect on school attendance was putting “a pharmaceutical solution to a political problem, so I’m not really sure that’s correct as well. But anyway that’s your opinion”.

Prof Kelly shot back “that’s not my opinion, that’s the science”. “There’s definitely a decrease in transmission from the virus,” he said.

The inquiry had earlier heard that Australia was on track to have all children aged between five and 11 first-dosed before school started next year.

”We will have capacity to get all that cohort first dosed early in the new year,” Covid-19 task force Commander Lieutenant General John Frewen said.

General Frewen also told the inquiry that 470,000 Australians had so far received a booster shot but that the number of people eligible was about 678,000.

He said that by March, April and May the number of people needing their booster would “ramp up”.