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Last Friday, I visited a vaccination clinic to request the AstraZeneca vaccine. There was no queue. I had a brief argument with the receptionist about my eligibility and persuaded them to let me discuss it with the GP in charge, considering how quiet it was. The doctor was willing to administer the vaccine and explained, for a very small proportion of recipients, it can cause harmful blood clots, especially for people in my age group: I’m in my 20s. I was only too happy to accept the risk.
On Monday, the Australian government decided to give all Australian adults access to the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been approved by the TGA for use for anyone over 18 since February. This invitation includes under-40s who, up until now, have not been welcomed into the vaccine rollout. The Prime Minister said on Monday night: “If [under-40s] are willing to go and speak to their doctor and have access to the AstraZeneca vaccine, they can do so.” This is great news. However, the Prime Minister should have gone one step further and encouraged all Australians, including those under 40, to take the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Jun Tong walked into a clinic last week and had an AstraZeneca jab.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is the only realistic and available option today for most Australians. Eighty per cent of our supply in the next few weeks will be AstraZeneca. It works well: data from Britain and from clinical trials show that it protects almost all recipients against hospitalisation and death. While the risk of clotting is real, it is very rare. Taking this vaccine urgently is the responsible thing to do when our neighbours in Indonesia, Fiji, and India are experiencing horrific waves of COVID infections. Once immunised, we should direct our future supplies to them. Taking the vaccine also hastens the restoration of our freedoms, opens our borders, and protects against further infringements of our rights.
We have two vaccines available today: the AstraZeneca vaccine and another by Pfizer. The former is produced locally in Melbourne and we have it in abundance: from July, 2.2 million new doses will be produced each week. The Pfizer vaccine is imported and its supply is currently constrained, with only about a tenth of the AstraZeneca supply. Pfizer stocks will ramp up to 1.7 million doses per week but not until October. If most Australians wait for Pfizer, many will not be vaccinated until next year. AstraZeneca is critical if we are to seriously protect ourselves against COVID-19 before the end of this year.
Both vaccines are similarly effective. Last week, Public Health England released data showing that the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines prevented 92 per cent and 96 per cent of vaccinated people against hospitalisation from the Delta variant of COVID-19, the most harmful variant to date. There is some evidence that Pfizer may be better at preventing symptomatic COVID than AstraZeneca, but hospitalisations and deaths are the critical measure of protection, and on these two counts, both vaccines are excellent and comparable.
It is worth understanding the risks from AstraZeneca thoroughly. The Commonwealth’s vaccine advisory group, ATAGI, declared this month that the Pfizer vaccine is the preferred option for Australians under the age of 60 because of the risk of rare blood clots, which is more pronounced for younger AstraZeneca recipients. ATAGI reasons that as Australia has few cases of COVID-19 today, the risks outweigh the benefits.
The risk of blood clots from the vaccine is real but very rare: about six cases of clotting per million people vaccinated. Of these clotting cases, about 10 per cent of them are fatal, according to Paul Menagle, professor of haematology at the University of Melbourne. However, doctors are becoming better at treating these clots and as a result, Professor Menagle presumes that the fatality rate “will come down further”. He adds: “It’s not the uniformly catastrophic disease that was originally presented.“
While it is right for ATAGI to make their decision on a clinical basis – and for that reason it is necessarily very conservative – the situation and seriousness of the pandemic globally means that every unvaccinated person should consider taking the AstraZeneca vaccine, so long as they appreciate the risks and can give informed consent.
We must use our large stock of vaccines quickly to help bring the global pandemic to an end. It is a miracle to find ourselves in the privileged position of being able to manufacture 2.2 million doses a week of a high-quality, low-risk vaccine at $5 a dose. Australia should use this resource wisely to prevent suffering and contribute to ending the pandemic. The period between when a dose of vaccine is produced to its injection into someone’s arm should be as brief as possible.
It is selfish of us to leave life-saving vaccines in fridges, as our neighbours are battling waves of high case numbers. Indonesia recorded over 20,000 new cases on Saturday as reports describe COVID-infected patients being turned away from hospitals. Fiji has a population of 900,000 but as of this week, is recording more than 200 infections per day and rising. Both these countries are facing their highest case numbers ever. India is recovering from a horrific wave of infections, experiencing 4,000 deaths a day in late May. How can we justify leaving vaccines unused while our neighbours suffer?
Taking up a vaccine we have in abundance today also brings forward the date when we can restore our freedoms and rights. Lockdowns and restrictions are severe impositions. They have worked to keep Australia COVID-free but they are expensive, with the costs unevenly borne by the young, those with insecure work, and small businesses. School shutdowns degrade the mental health of children and stymie their education. Border closures have painfully separated families and friends from each other for the past 18 months. They have also kept us away from the world and the world from us, leaving us more impoverished economically and culturally. They are not easy things to recover from and it is unjustifiable to leave vaccines in the fridge when these restrictions are in place.
What’s more, our government has fallen afoul of international human rights law. Article 13 of the UN’s Human Rights Declaration provides every citizen the right to leave one’s own country and to move freely within its borders. Our political leaders have never acknowledged this. Violating Article 13 may be justified to keep COVID-19 at bay but immediate vaccination offers a clear and quick path to restoring free movement. Rights are easily given up but are difficult to regain. As a recent example, consider the ban on our citizens returning from India. Or the use of QR code check-in data by police, something that our state governments had promised would not happen.
This pandemic is a defining moment for Australia. Compared with previous crises, the demands on us are slight: we must take the vaccine we have available as quickly as possible and bear the very small risk of adverse effects. There is no smaller sacrifice.
Jun Tong is a researcher in biology at the University of Queensland.
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