Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly: Vaccination is key to our future in the COVID pandemic

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has revealed why vaccines are key to our future. See where you can get a jab near you and if you’re eligible.

Australians can be proud of the very significant role they have played in supporting our successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but our task is not over.

Australians have taken individual and collective responsibility to follow all the health advice on how to stop the spread of COVID-19 – and have adhered to the restrictions imposed to stop the virus from spreading when we have had outbreaks.

This has been hard and sometimes distressing for many people; staying home instead of visiting family, overseeing remote learning by children – even delaying weddings and missing funerals.

But we are reaping the rewards.

We’re able to attend major sporting events. Meet friends for dinner at restaurants. And watch our kids play weekend sport. We can do all these things knowing there is very little chance we will contract COVID-19.

Federal Acting Chief Medical Officer Prof Paul Kelly

But if this is to continue, we need to take the next step in protecting ourselves and our loved ones.

We have learnt to hand sanitise, keep our distance and wear masks.

Now we need to vaccinate.

Because there is no sustained community transmission of COVID-19 in Australia, some people who are a little hesitant feel they can wait.

And why do we have so little community transmission of COVID-19? Largely because our international borders are all-but closed and what travel there is subject to our world-class quarantine system – which includes the hotel quarantine that has been set up to support Australians returning home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To date, the hotel quarantine system has been more than 99.9 per cent effective at protecting the Australian community against the coronavirus.

But despite the strength of our quarantine, it is inevitable at some point there will be sustained outbreaks of COVID-19 in the Australian community. It is not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.

At some stage, we need to reopen our international borders – to allow Australians to travel again and reunite with families and friends and to support education, tourism and trade.

This is something to look forward to – and is an important step in Australians being able to return to a more normal way of life.

A life with more certainty.

Given the extent of the global pandemic, it is very likely there will still be community transmission of COVID-19 overseas when we reopen our borders to the rest of the world.

And the reality is, when our international borders are reopened, it is very likely we will have new cases of COVID-19 – every day.

That is why vaccination is essential. We will likely see outbreaks when our borders reopen, even with continued protections. This will put people, especially older Australians, at risk of severe illness and possibly death if they haven’t been vaccinated.

We need to act to avoid this from occurring. A key component of this is vaccinating as many Australians as possible against COVID-19.

We now know that vaccines give very strong, and sustained, protection against the severe forms of COVID-19. They also give some protection against mild illness and influence the transmission of the SARS-COV-2 virus to others.

Widespread vaccination will give us the confidence to reopen our borders, knowing our population will be protected against the worst effects of COVID-19.

We see the evidence of this in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.

Widespread vaccination will give businesses more confidence and provide us with more certainty to plan important events – for instance family reunions and much-needed holidays – with less likelihood of them having to be cancelled or disrupted by a COVID-19 outbreak.

Widespread vaccination will give Australians more certainty we won’t have to impose snap lockdowns or close domestic borders.

And importantly, every person who is vaccinated will be helping to protect the health of their family, friends and community.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison bumps elbows with Professor Paul Kelly after they both received a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in February. Picture: AFP

So while it might not seem urgent, we have a window – now – when we don’t have sustained community transmission of the virus to roll out COVID-19 vaccines to the Australian population.

We started by targeting our most vulnerable population groups, before progressively expanding the roll out of vaccines and moving finally to the entire population.

Australia is currently rolling out two COVID-19 vaccines – AstraZeneca and Pfizer. We know both of these vaccines are incredibly effective at preventing severe illness and death from COVID-19.

Supplies of our COVID-19 vaccines are continuing to grow – and we now have more than 4500 sites across the country where all Australians aged 50 and over can get vaccinated.

I encourage everyone to follow the medical advice. And the advice is clear: vaccines save lives and will prevent you from becoming seriously ill – and this is the case for our COVID-19 vaccines.

Originally published as Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly: Vaccination is key to our future in the COVID pandemic