In the past few weeks, a small group of epidemiologists have raised questions around the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The majority of the Australian population is due to receive this jab this year but they’ve questioned whether it’s the best option, given studies have shown it is about 62 per cent effective in preventing COVID-19.
The Pfizer vaccine, which is being rolled out to mainly front-line workers and aged care residents, is about 95 per cent effective.
Australia has also secured agreements for the Novavax vaccine, which has yet to be approved but early trials show has an efficacy of 89 per cent.
Adrian Esterman, the chair of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of South Australia, says the Astra-Zeneca jab also appears to have a lower chance of stopping transmission.
"The only reservation I have and it's not a big one even, is that not it's not as efficacious as the Pfizer BioNTech, and potentially it's not as good at stopping transmission as the Pfizer BioNTech but we don't know she had good data on that yet and that would just make it a little bit more difficult to achieve herd immunity."
"So the real issue is if the Novavax vaccine is very similar to Pfizer BioNTech in terms of its efficacy, why wouldn’t we use that instead of AstraZeneca when it comes. And that's not been discussed by the government at all."
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