Australians need to shed ‘false sense of security’ over future vaccines

AMA Vice President Dr Chris Moy says the vaccine rollout should be “beyond politicisation” as Australia is heading into winter and protection against COVID-19 becomes more urgent. “We’re wide open at the moment and we’re facing what we need to face it with,” he said. “We can’t have this false sense of security with having sort of this vaccine in the distant future because we’ll see it when we see it and really at the moment what we need to do is actually get going and shoring up the frontline because we’re heading into winter.” "My understanding is we're going to get increased supplies late in the year ... but really that's a backstop, a second line of defence, it's our reserves." Dr Moy told Sky News the warning from Health Minister Greg Hunt that older Australians may not be first in the queue to receive an mRNA jab if they have delayed receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine was the right decision “from the overall public health point of view”. “What we have at the moment is a limited resource in terms of the Pfizer, which is a good vaccine, but we also have another very good vaccine which is AstraZeneca which we have a lot more which we’re making in Australia. “The decisions have to be made in a fair, equitable way to spread that so that we get the best effect and in the safest way.”

from Breaking National News and Australian News | Daily Telegraph https://ift.tt/3feaiKH