JIM WILSON:
Now, it’s been a big story all day. More questions are being raised of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. This is the one we're all going to get, or the majority of us Spain, Germany, France, Italy have all now paused the jab’s rollout. They’ve followed in the footsteps of Denmark, Iceland and Norway, as well as Ireland, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Thailand. They’re concerned the vaccine is causing some serious side effects, in particular blood clots in the brains of people who have been vaccinated.
So, is it safe? The Therapeutic Goods Administration have given it the tick. That's enough for me. But these new developments have a lot of my listeners, a lot of you, worried. And joining me now is Dr John Skerritt, the head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Dr Skerritt, welcome back to Drive.
JOHN SKERRITT:
Yes, good afternoon, Jim.
JIM WILSON:
Is the AstraZeneca vaccine safe?
JOHN SKERRITT:
We believe it is. One of the challenges, of course, with any vaccine or medicine that's used very widely in the community is differentiating between cause and effect. And sadly, 8 per cent of people at some stage of their life will have one of these blood clotting problems. And so 8 per cent of people are very, very many. Fifty people are diagnosed with Venous Thromboembolism, the main form of deep vein thrombosis. And so, identifying cause and effect is what we are currently looking at. We don't have any evidence that there is an effect, but we're working very closely with the Europeans on this.
JIM WILSON:
So Australia right now won't be pausing the AstraZeneca vaccine rollout?
JOHN SKERRITT:
With the information we have at the moment, we don't have evidence that would justify pausing the roll out because we don't have evidence that this is an effect of the vaccine. You know, any group of people, as I said, 17,000 a year, 50 a day, will develop VTE, the clotting disorder, and those people have had a range of vaccines, a range of medicines, or no vaccines at all. And so, until we have evidence that there's cause and effect, we won't be pausing the rollout.
JIM WILSON:
Has the testing or the rollout of this vaccine, Doctor, been rushed or influenced in any way?
JOHN SKERRITT:
No, we don't believe it has. Certainly the timeframes from getting the initial data to the approval were maybe twice as fast as usual, but that was because, and I've said this sadly before, none of us went to the beach this summer. We had staff, including myself, we worked all the way through Christmas, New Year and most of the period, plus we had teams working in parallel, sometimes seven days a week. And so we put the same amount of effort into reviewing this vaccine as any vaccine. It's just because I had big teams working in parallel, we were able to do it faster.
JIM WILSON:
The bottom line here, Doctor, is that the TGA would not be rolling the dice or taking any risk with people's welfare or safety.
JOHN SKERRITT:
No. We take safety very seriously and we are working very closely with the Europeans. It's important to emphasise, but while some individual countries, and you mentioned some of them, have suspended for a couple of weeks their rollout of the vaccine, the European Union, the Central Medicines Agency, continues to support the use of this vaccine. And similarly, the British, who have more experience than anyone else in the world – some 11 million people have been vaccinated in the UK with the vaccine – have not found any evidence of these clots. And to quote from their public information: people should continue to go and get their AstraZeneca COVID vaccine when asked to do so. So, that's 11 million. A bit like hamburgers, there's an awful lot of hamburgers sold, and the British have not found any problems.
JIM WILSON:
Doctor, as always, thanks for your time this afternoon.
JOHN SKERRITT:
Thanks very much.
JIM WILSON:
That's Dr John Skerritt from the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
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