Covid 19 coronavirus: Why new vaccine is safe - your questions answered
17 Feb, 2021 11:15 PM
5 minutes to read
Just the facts - A closer look at the first four vaccines to be rolled out in New Zealand. How they work, why we need them and who developed them. Video / NZ Herald
Just the facts - A closer look at the first four vaccines to be rolled out in New Zealand. How they work, why we need them and who developed them. Video / NZ Herald
NZ Herald
The first batch of Covid-19 vaccine has arrived in New Zealand and is being given to front line workers. The rest of the country will follow as more doses become available - but polls show up to 30 per cent of Kiwis are still hesitant about getting the injections. Auckland University vaccines expert Dr Helen Petousis-Harris answers some of your most frequently asked questions.
David White stuff.co.nz
Vaccinologist Dr Helen Petousis-Harris breaks down how a Covid-19 vaccine was developed so fast and what will happen next.
The long spotted nightmare was almost over. From her holiday Airbnb in France, vaccine expert Helen Petousis-Harris had just talked to Australian media about the final fizzling of Samoa s devastating measles epidemic. But in that same room, in mid-December 2019, she watched a news report about an odd pneumonia emerging in China. A new nightmare was just beginning. The Auckland University vaccinologist had criticised the government for New Zealand’s own measles epidemic, which we exported to Samoa. The Health Ministry had failed to plug immunisation gaps, despite repeated pleas, and a 2017 mumps outbreak that exposed the depletion of public health resources. The epidemic should never have happened, Petousis-Harris said.
A health care worker holds a Pfizer/BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine.
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
As Covid-19 vaccines go into broad use, some rare side effects of vaccination will almost certainly emerge, like the reports of small numbers of people developing anaphylaxis. But so will medical events whose timing just comes down to random chance and the potential ripple effects of those reports already have experts concerned.
Every single day, people die unexpectedly. They have strokes and heart attacks and seizures. On an average day, 110 people in this country may develop Bell’s palsy, a temporary facial paralysis, and another 274 will develop Guillain-Barré syndrome, a form of paralysis that usually resolves over time. The trigger for these medical events often isn’t known. But when they happen shortly after someone gets a vaccine especially a new one well, conclusions will be drawn.