EXPERTS ADVISE PATIENTS TO TAKE ‘WHICHEVER VACCINE YOU ARE OFFERED’
THE COVID-19 vaccine has finally arrived on our shores and people across the county are lining up to take it, to protect themselves from a virus which has changed each and every one of our lives.
But while we wait our turn, wait for the jabs which will provide immunity from that dreaded illness, a fresh debate has arisen: namely, which vaccine should we take?
There are currently two vaccinations available in Ireland, those made by Pfizer and Moderna, and they will soon be joined by the AstraZeneca (Oxford) vaccination - pending approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
And what makes this is interesting is that the AstraZeneca vaccine has, to date, been found to produce no allergic reactions.
Padraig Murphy is a pharmacist at Haven Pharmacy Murphys, and he explains how the AstraZeneca vaccine could lead to more people being vaccinated both here and across the country at a rate unlike that which we’ve seen so far.
‘The AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine has been found to produce no reaction. In terms of the Pfizer vaccine the only data we have seen is that eight people out of 1.5 million had a reaction, which is less than one in 100,000,’ Padraig explains.
‘But even though the probability of a reaction is low this means that every vaccinator (of the Pfizer vaccine) will have to monitor the recipient for 15 minutes afterwards.
‘This potentially creates a large inconvenience when it’s rolled out in the community, especially in terms of Covid-19 regulations and social distancing.’
Yet when the AstraZeneca vaccine arrives in Ireland that wait time will potentially be eliminated.
‘This is why the AstraZeneca vaccine could have a huge advantage as you will be able to leave immediately afterwards,’ Padraig says.
‘And it could be available here by the end of this month, it’s just waiting to be approved. We would have large numbers of it in Ireland as we have orders placed already.’
Despite the minor differences in terms of side-effects, Padraig is keen to stress that each vaccine essentially does the same job and no-one should be worried about taking one over the other.
‘I can see the AstraZeneca being the one most of us get but in no way should anyone wait for that one to come around, I would emphasise that I would have no particular preference for one over the other,’ he says.
‘In terms of the three main vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca, they all work in the same way, they release what you might liken to a post-it note which gets inside a cell in your body, it adheres to the cell and causes you to produce a harmless protein which has been identified as a target of the virus.
‘Our immune systems recognise that the protein doesn’t belong there and build an immune response. At the end of the process, our bodies have learned how to protect against future infection.’
But what of the speed in which the vaccine is currently being rolled out, should more people have received their vaccines by this point?
‘We should ensure we have a system in place to facilitate an expeditious rollout of the vaccine,’ Padraig says. ‘I would have liked to have seen a faster rollout but it is accelerating now that we have a more reliable supply.
‘Denmark has 2 per cent of its population vaccinated and one of the main reasons for that is the robust personal identification number system they employ. It allows them to easily identify priority groups and notify them.’
Staff at Haven Pharmacy Murphys have yet to receive their jabs, but Padraig says they are down as being in phase two because they are ‘offering our services as vaccinators’.
And he believes the list of priority groups compiled by the Government has been wellthought out.
‘There’s been a lot of thought put into that, the aim of the vaccine is to save lives and every bit of evidence surrounding this virus says it’s best to protect the most vulnerable and the frontline workers who treat them. We have no current date on when staff will receive it here, but we’re down as being in phase two.’
Equally as important as ensuring staff are vaccinated, is the welfare of the pharmacy’s customers, and Padraig says they are all looking forward to being able to provide those vital jabs when the time comes.
‘We’ve been getting a lot of queries here, the majority of them positive, some people asking if they can be put on a list. But we can’t make a list, the hope is the HSE inform people when they can receive it and when it’s their turn we can facilitate it for them.’
Professor Cliona O’Farrelly, who is an immunologist at Trinity College Dublin, says that, unlike some, she would be ‘loath’ to criticise the speed in which the vaccine is being rolled out.
‘When you see how hard people are working to get this done it’s very difficult to be critical,’ she said. ‘And, of course, this is impacting on other healthcare services, patients are more afraid of Covid than they are cancer, they’re not going into the hospitals, putting surgeries back, it’s really hard.’
‘But in my experience people are overjoyed to receive the vaccine, I know someone in a nursing home who said there was a sense of celebration when the vaccine arrived, imagine that? The realisation that they were all going to be protected from this terrible illness was a cause for celebration.’
The Professor reiterates Padraig’s position on the different vaccines, urging patients to ‘take whichever one becomes available’. But, referencing the Danish model, she says she would like to see a more fluid system introduced in the healthcare system to help alleviate this crisis.
‘I would like to see a system introduced like that in Denmark, where you get pinged when it’s your turn to be vaccinated,’ she says. ‘Our systems are so behind here, if a person is going to hospital they have to give their details each time they go to a different one.’
A colleague of both Padraig’s and Cliona’s, and a fellow member of the Wexford Science Cafe (WSC), believes the time is right to ‘think outside the box’ when it comes to allaying the concerns of those hesitant about receiving the vaccine.
Andrew Lloyd (66) is a former Senior Scientist in Comparative Immunology at St Vincent’s University Hospital and he would like to see younger generations encouraged to take the vaccine by their peers.
‘The people in my demographic would look up to someone entirely different from those my daughter would. She’s not going to be influenced by the pop stars of my youth,’ Andrew says.
When asked about the possibility of paying social media influencers to promote the vaccine he is unequivocal in his response.
‘What would be wrong with that? If we’re bringing five million vaccines into the country, which have sell-by dates by the way, and a percentage of people choose not to take them up, what do we do?
‘It’s not a police state, we can’t force them to take the vaccine. Maybe thinking outside the box is a good thing, let’s pay the Instagram influencers €100,000 to promote it, and if that guarantees a rise in take-up from 40-80 per cent then that’s a win. That’s a tiny amount of money compared to what a TD earns in a year.’
Andrew echoes the belief that those in a position to do so should take whichever vaccine is made available to them.
‘There’s people in England who have refused to take the Pfizer vaccine (made in Germany) because it’s foreign,’ he says. ‘But I don’t think the general public are in position to opt for one vaccine over the other, there’s isn’t enough data to have a solid opinion on any of them yet.
‘If you think you should get the vaccine, whether that’s because you’re on the frontline, or doing so will give you a better quality of life, then you should do so.’
However, Andrew admits that he wasn’t always so enthusiastic about vaccines.
‘We started a family quite young and then waited 18 years to have our two daughters, and during that time my own attitude to vaccines changed,’ he explains. ‘I’m trained in science but decided that my son shouldn’t get the MMR vaccine; he ended up contracting measles. A few years later we went to the States and when we visited the doctor he was appalled my son had contracted measles, he thought we were like people from the Third World.
Reflecting on his own change of view, Andrew says that public perception is everything when it comes to vaccinations.
‘What happens is the negatives get emphasised, that’s what happened with the MMR and autism for example, yet it rapidly turned out that the person behind that study had been fiddling the data.
‘That study got a high profile, but the retraction didn’t get nearly as much coverage.’
Brian Trench is also a member of the WSC - which meets on the third Tuesday of every month and he is part of the third cohort (people aged 70 or over) set to receive the vaccine.
A science communication researcher and founder of the Masters in Science Communication course at Dublin City University (DCU), Brian is patiently awaiting the call which will confirm he is to be vaccinated.
‘I am happy to wait my turn, I hope and expect to be contacted when a vaccine is available,’ he says. ‘I would be in the third cohort of people set to receive it.
‘There seems to be a bit of panic about this, but that’s to be expected when the supply isn’t predictable. But I’d be inclined to give the Government some leeway, a lot of complaints that we’re hearing now will hopefully be forgotten about when everyone is vaccinated.’
‘I heard someone on the radio saying the communication of the vaccine roll-out hasn’t been well-handled, this is true to an extent but I don’t see it as being a major failure.
‘It’s very difficult to develop a
completely new programme in such a short space of time.’
As we cautiously begin to look to the future, Brian says the cost of the pandemic, in a financial sense, will eventually hit the nation hard. ‘Clearly the cost of managing a pandemic is absolutely massive, and it’s interesting that question hasn’t been asked too much,’ he says. ‘People have accepted this high level of state spending, it’s almost been a case of “we’ll worry about the sums later”. But the financial impact will be massive.’