The numbers don't lie, the adage goes.
And in regards to COVID-19 in Australia right now, that is undoubtedly the case.
Just one case of COVID-19 was reported in the community this week — a worker in a quarantine hotel in Sydney who tested positive on Thursday.
And on Friday, NSW authorities confirmed no new cases of COVID-19 in the state.
The numbers meant New South Wales this week relaxed its restrictions, the Queensland hard border became a memory and even Western Australia — the most cautious state in the country — announced plans to open up to the rest of Australia.
Yet the numbers tell a different story in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the UK on Wednesday — the day the British Government announced emergency approval of the Pfizer vaccine — 16,170 people were diagnosed with COVID-19.
In the US on Thursday more than 2,800 people died from COVID-19.
Across the world there were 453,000 COVID-19 cases reported and 7,837 deaths on Tuesday alone.
The numbers don't lie.
And the worst-affected countries are waiting — and hoping — for a vaccine to come as soon as possible to help those numbers drop.
But with COVID-19 still impacting Australians' everyday lives, restricting free travel and the return of pre-COVID life, the news of the emergency approval of the Pfizer vaccine from Old Blighty this week sparked some inevitable questions.
Undoubtedly, the most common question was: "why can't we get the vaccine?".
"I understand it completely," National Centre for Immunisation Research & Surveillance director Professor Kristine Macartney said.
"And we need to be realistic and follow the principles of the vaccine going where it is needed the most.
"Look, just for example, look at the US and the UK, you have thousands dying and hundreds of thousands infected every day.
"It is completely understandable they want to fast-track it.
"But, in Australia, it's not going to be much longer — more information is forthcoming every day."
This thirst for information on the vaccine is highlighted by the ABC's Hearken project, which has been collating audience questions throughout the pandemic.
So far this year the project has received 5,368 questions related to COVID-19 vaccines.
Understandably that spiked this week with 133 questions being thrown at the ABC in just three days and more than a thousand have been received during November.
Some questions, such as "will you be required to be vaccinated with the chosen vaccine of each country visited?" are, right now, according to the experts, firmly in the "too speculative" basket.
As is "does taking multiple vaccines give you better protection?" — one expert labelled that the "unknown, unknowable".
With only one vaccine in the one country being approved for emergency use — and no vaccine yet to release its full phase 3 results — experts say, again, patience is required.
But, they say, there are some questions which can be answered — or at least attempted to be answered.
Will you need a vaccine if you have already had COVID?
"We don't know how long immunity lasts after having COVID," director of epidemiology at The Doherty Institute Professor Jodie McVernon said.
"And we know people who have had the infection don't all respond equally.
"We vaccinate to try and increase protection in the population.
Can a vaccinated person still spread the virus?
"This is the big unknown from these vaccines," Professor McVernon, who is also an expert in vaccine trials, said.
"So everyone is talking about herd immunity but we don't know whether these vaccines will stop infection.
"So what we're looking at in the trials is the clinical end-point efficacy. So we look at 'you had the vaccine, and you didn't — who got sick?'.
"And a vaccine, crudely, has two ways of stopping you getting sick: it might stop you getting infected in the first place, or it might let you get infected and stop you getting severe disease.
"The UK AstraZeneca trial is actually swabbing people every week to see if they are picking up the infection, but it's the only trial I know of to test whether a vaccine is stopping infection."
The results of the AstraZeneca trial, which is developing its vaccine with Oxford University, are expected to be released in the next two weeks.
The Australian Government has committed to 33.8 million doses of this vaccine.
Will Australians be exposed to multiple vaccines from different companies?
"This is highly likely," Professor McVernon said.
"But we still don't know which vaccine works best for which groups.
"And different manufactures will have different trials going and we'll have different data for different groups.
"And we may end up with a mix."
Could there be any long-term side effects?
According to Sheena Sullivan, an Australian representative form the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, we don't know yet.
"We haven't had a long enough term to study this," Dr Sullivan said. "We don't know enough yet.
"When I think long-term I think years.
"And nothing can be studied adequately for long-term effects for anything relating to this disease yet, as it hasn't existed long enough."
If one vaccine has '95 per cent efficacy', what happens to the 'other 5 per cent' — people who fail to benefit from a vaccine?
"We haven't seen the data," Dr Sullivan, who is based at The Doherty Institute, said.
"And there are lots of different elements here.
"But there are two schools of thought. We have an 'all or nothing or nothing vaccine' — where it really is the case where 95 are protected and won't get infected and 5 per cent may.
"Whereas a 'leaky vaccine', there's an idea that everyone is kind of 'a bit protected'.
"And it depends on who these people are [their age, demographic, race etc] who haven't responded.
"But again, we haven't seen the full data set.
"It's really, really hard to comment right now — we just can't say for sure."
With the world about to embark on the biggest immunisation program ever seen, many more questions will inevitably come.
But according to Professor Macartney, who is also an advisor to WHO on ongoing vaccine surveillance, the process has so far been "incredibly rigorous" — and the public should have confidence in that.
"There is this overall effort, the greatest scientific minds trying to make sure there are lots of people vaccinated during 2021," she said.
"But, more generally, there are so many processes happening in parallel and the exact timeframes for these time frames are difficult to be precise on.
"There are hundreds of thousands of people working around the clock to make sure the best possible guidelines are followed for the rollout of the vaccines.
"But it will have to come in a rolling way. It will all come simultaneously, as it can be supported by the evidence the public wants and deserves."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTEyLTA1L2NvdmlkMTktdmFjY2luZS1xdWVzdGlvbnMtYXBwcm92YWwtYW5kLWRhdGEtcmVxdWlyZXMtcGF0aWVuY2UvMTI5NTA2MDjSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTI5NTA2MDg?oc=5
2020-12-04 19:13:00Z
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