Infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon says there is “no reason to think” the newly approved AstraZeneca vaccine will not be effective against COVID-19 in all age ranges.
“We’ve got good data that shows it works and it appears to be very effective across all ages to stop you getting very sick and going to hospital,” he told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.
Professor Collignon said the vaccine data was “still relatively limited” but the data already collected shows the vaccine’s efficacy and more will be delivered to the TGA as part of the agreement with AstraZeneca.
“At the moment, yes it looks like it works, yes it looks like it’s safe, but as with all these things it’s really important to keep on getting more data.”
Quarantine must be made to work better
We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
Dismiss
Normal text size
Advertisement
Since the most recent return to lockdown, the message from Victoria’s government to its population has been that “we know how to do this”. However with the latest breach of hotel quarantine, a reasonable response is “are you sure?”. Moreover, those voices asking why we have to keep doing it – and more importantly, whether the government is learning from its mistakes – have grown increasingly urgent and authoritative.
Age, Professor Lindsay Grayson – an expert witness at last year’s state inquiry into hotel quarantine and leading infectious diseases expert – says that infection controls within the state’s quarantine hotel system still aren’t strict enough when it comes to protective equipment and procedures. He also argues that talk of the challenge posed by the so-called UK variant of the virus is mis
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was nowhere to be seen yesterday after concerns emerged regarding a gap in the containment ring around Melbourne s latest coronavirus outbreak. Over the weekend it was revealed that a large group of individuals were potentially exposed to the mutant UK strain after a female quarantine worker attended a family event in Melbourne s inner north on February 6. Investigators initially ruled it out as an exposure site after the worker tested negative the following day, on February 7 - but when a guest later returned a positive result, authorities looked into the woman s result and found it was actually a weak positive .
Don t privatise COVID quarantine - MacroBusiness macrobusiness.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from macrobusiness.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Infectious disease expert Professor Peter Collignon is warning against “overreacting” to news a New South Wales resident tested positive to the virus after completing hotel quarantine.
“The reality is if you have a very low level of infection … then there’s not much virus there,” he told Sky News.
“That can either mean you’re in the very early part of your infection and it’s going to get worse, but that seems very unlikely with this person, or it may mean you had an infection quite a while ago and its intermittently been detected”.
Professor Collignon pointed to research in Korea which saw a “large proportion” of people who had contracted the coronavirus still tested positive a month or two months later.
“We need more information, but let’s not get overexcited at this stage,” he said.
“The reality is 99.9 per cent of people who develop COVID do it within 14 days of exposure and therefore I can’t see any need to increase the quarantine period