How keen are you to get a COVID-19 vaccine into you?
Well, it seems any potential COVID-19 vaccine will be treated with scepticism – at least for a while – if this WebMD reader poll is anything to go by.
The survey revealed that fewer than half of people plan to get a coronavirus vaccine in the first year it’s available, and fewer than a third say they’ll get it in the first 90 days.
Just over 40 per cent said would get a vaccine, while 28 per cent said they did not and another 30 per cent were unsure. Only 26 per cent said they would get the vaccine in the first 90 days, and 42 per cent said they would within the first 12 months.
“This serves as a wake-up call,” said WebMD chief medical officer John Whyte, MD.
“If immunization rates are low, then we’re not going to achieve the level of herd immunity needed to protect us from this virus.”
Public health officials say a 70 per cent level of herd immunity would be required for the pandemic to end.
“How are we going to reopen if people aren’t getting the vaccine? We need a ‘Plan B,’” said Dr Whyte.
Researchers around the world are working on more than 165 vaccines. The race to develop and test an effective vaccine, have people questioning any possible vaccines safety and efficacy.
Of the 1000 WebMD readers polled, 78 per cent cited concerns about side-effects and another 15% weren’t convinced it would be effective.
Would you take a vaccine in the first year it was released? Are you concerned about the safety of rushing a potential vaccine into production?
Victorian aged care residents could be included in the next stage of testing for a potential COVID-19 vaccine that has shown positive results during phase one human trials in Adelaide.
The vaccine candidate, COVAX-19, was developed by Adelaide-based company Vaxine, which has laboratories at Flinders University.
Volunteers between the ages of 18 and 65 in Adelaide have been injected with two doses of either COVAX-19 or a placebo in the phase one trial.
One of the volunteers for the phase one Adelaide trial was SA Best MP Frank Pangallo.
"I feel great — I had my second dose of the vaccine today and no side-effects for me," Mr Pangallo said on Friday.
"I'm really buoyed by the positive results."
Lead researcher Professor Nikolai Petrovsky said the vaccine candidate had been shown to be safe and to induce antibodies that attack the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
"We've had no major side-effects in any of the subjects," said Professor Petrovsky.
He said the vaccine had also shown positive results in trials on animals in the United States in protecting them from COVID-19 infection.
"That makes us more confident that this is actually going to work and that we might have a successful vaccine on our hands," he said.
If the vaccine candidate passes subsequent trials, it could be ready by year's end, he said.
This morning on SBS Aljazeera news ...
Russia will start rolling out Covid 19 Vaccine in October
Doctors and Health care workers will receive the vaccine first.