Therapeutic Goods Administration Adj, Professor John Skerritt interview on the Today Show on 4 December 2020

Read the transcript of Adj, Professor John Skerritt interview on the Today Show on 4 December 2020 about coronavirus (COVID-19)

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KARL STEFANOVIC:

Well by this time next week, the very first coronavirus vaccinations may have been administered in England, the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer jab. So when does Australia authorise it? There’s one man the PM trusts to make that call.

[EXCERPT]

SCOTT MORRISON:

If Professor Skerritt gives it the tick, then I’m happy to take the jab.

[END OF EXCERPT]

ALLISON LANGDON:

And Professor John Skerritt from the Therapeutic Goods Administration joins us now. Very good morning to you, Professor. If it's good enough for the PM, it's good enough for us. How long is it expected to take?

JOHN SKERRITT:

Good morning, Ally. Well, we’re in a different situation from the UK. Quite fortunately, we're the envy of a lot of the world in terms of our case numbers, and even though every death is sad, it's important to remember we’ve had as many deaths during the whole pandemic as the US had in something like seven or eight hours’ yesterday. So that’s really frightening. So we're waiting a little bit longer to get more complete data on how well the vaccine works clinically, what groups it works with, how long the protection might be, and more complete data about safety. We’re hoping and expecting over the next few weeks we’ll get the rest of that data, and busily over Christmas and New Year and into January and maybe by early February, we’re hoping that the first of the vaccines will be approved by us for rollout in the first quarter of 2021.

KARL STEFANOVIC:

Professor, it’s wonderful to talk to you today, actually, given the circumstances surrounding these vaccines. And I wanted to ask you, given that we've got all of that information coming out of the UK and they've approved it, that access to that information clearly flows pretty readily between countries, does it? Or how does that all work?

JOHN SKERRITT:

It flows extremely readily. Many- both me and many of my staff have bags under our eyes because often two and three nights a week we're on late night teleconferences with those countries. I spoke to the UK I think it was Wednesday night. I spoke to Canada just yesterday and so forth. So we talk to each other all the time. We look at each other's data.

I do want to emphasise the UK did a thorough review on what data they had. But they were looking at data they had as of November, and there’s more data coming through in December and we believe that’s pretty important data. And we’ll continue to talk with these people every couple of days. It's a very close working relationship between all the different countries. It’s really been a shining example of where cooperation between countries really can add value.

ALLISON LANGDON:

I mean, it is extraordinary, isn’t it, that in such a short amount of time we’re looking at several options for a vaccine. As you say, you and your team have been working throughout the night. And is it true that your staff have been told to cancel their Christmas holidays because they're on to this until it's done?

JOHN SKERRITT:

Well, I've been encouraging them to think about how great autumn holidays are, and where people have been able to take leave I've been encouraging people to take leave in November. It won't be everybody, but we’ve got some extremely dedicated people, and I want to go on record, the amount of time, commitment, things people have given up for the greater good.

Often regulators are seen as backroom staff, we’re not there on the frontline of the hospitals, and of course our frontline people have done an absolutely fantastic job too. But we’ve got doctors and scientists, and engineers and many other people who are working around the clock, and I just want to acknowledge that. And yes, many of us – myself included - will be quite busy during December and January.

KARL STEFANOVIC:

Professor, I guess the most common thing being asked around every Australian household right now is, is this thing, because it's been, it’s seemingly rushed through overseas, is it going to be safe for us to take it here? Given all those parameters, what would you say to people in Australia and do you have your job convincing them that it is safe?

JOHN SKERRITT:

Well, it's important that the public is reassured about the safety of vaccines. Now, every new medicine or vaccine that comes in is closely watched for safety. It may be, for example, that certain people, say, with diseases like multiple sclerosis who shouldn't take particular vaccines, and that’s the sort of information that we're gathering. And the beauty because we're working with all these countries, is we’re not just getting information from our population of 25 million. We’ll be getting information from safety across the whole US, across Europe, across the UK. And when you’re looking at data from hundreds of millions of people, you can pick up this sort of thing much more quickly and be able to give good clinical advice. The reason why they've been developed so quickly is very simple: money, money, money. Billions of dollars. The biggest investment in a new area of medical research and pharmaceutical development I think that I’ve ever known.

And it's become the number one priority of just about every top shelf research organisation globally, medical research organisation. So if you put enough people and masses, billions of dollars of money, what you’re able to do is, instead of doing one step of a five or six or seven or eight steps at a time and then before you spend the next 20 or 50 million dollars if you're a big company, you can actually do all those things in parallel. And that’s what actually happened. So many of the steps have been carried out in parallel, even though it's risky, because if it fails, we’ve done their money. But the governments and companies have taken that commercial risk because of the importance. So that's why the development’s been done within a year rather than in five or six years.

ALLISON LANGDON:

We know that there was a point recently where one of the trials was shut down because someone suffered side effects, which in the end was determined it wasn't linked to the vaccine. But how do you get an idea of the potential long-term effects of the vaccine when time here, you just don't have?

JOHN SKERRITT:

Yeah. So that’s really important. Now, there's two types of effects that happen with vaccines. There's what we call reactogenicity, which is a bit of a big word, but it’s actually straight after you've had the jab and most people have experienced that even with a flu vaccine. You might get a temperature; you might get a sore arm. Some kids, especially young teenagers can faint. They're short lasting effects and often Panadol and going and having a lie down will fix you.

Serious adverse events with vaccines tend to arise – if they do arise and they’re rare – six, eight weeks or so after a vaccine. There’s very few that arise years later. Now what we have are a team of doctors and scientists who are really disease detectives and their job is to see where does- let's say someone does get multiple sclerosis or motor neuron disease or something rather after having a vaccine, is it cause and effect or is it just a coincidence? Because when we’re going to be vaccinating millions of people, sadly people drop dead of heart attacks, people drop dead of strokes, people get multiple sclerosis, they get motor neuron disease, they get diabetes. And statistically, thousands of people will die of strokes. Not because of a vaccine, just because of the statistics. And remembering, we’re giving these vaccines to older people too. So what the job of my doctors and scientist is, is to identify cause and effect, and we’re doing that as part of a global network with some of the top scientists globally.

KARL STEFANOVIC:

We literally have just a couple of seconds left, but I wanted to ask you this: given the fact that you may have- you may struggle to get everyone to have it, is there a threshold number that is- where it's most effective, this vaccine? Because you don't want 50 per cent of the population having it and the other 50 per cent not. Is there a threshold number where it works?

JOHN SKERRITT:

We don’t know- that’s called herd immunity, Karl, and we don't know the exact number. For vaccines, it usually varies between about 70 and 90 per cent, but it also depends on the efficacy of a vaccine and how long the vaccine lasts, and that’s a big question. We don't know if people will have to have booster shots or not.

ALLISON LANGDON:

Right. Professor, it is so reassuring listening to you this morning. And I think the Prime Minister is right; if you say it's okay, then we’re good to go. Thanks for your time this morning. We appreciate it.

KARL STEFANOVIC:

It’s great to have him on to give it all perspective and to know that there are incredibly bright people looking at this and making it safe for us to have when it eventually becomes available for us.

ALLISON LANGDON:

And not being rushed.

KARL STEFANOVIC:

Smart fellow. Smart fellow.

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