Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young urges young Queenslanders to consider AstraZeneca vaccine
Just 24 hours after saying young Queenslanders should not take the AstraZeneca vaccine, chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young has changed her advice.
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Young Queenslanders should now speak to their doctors about getting the AstraZeneca vaccine, with the virus on the precipice of a large outbreak in the southeast, Dr Jeannette Young says.
The Chief Health Officer today changed her advice to over 18s after repeating just yesterday that she did not want them to take the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying the risk profile had now changed.
“The ATAGI advice says when you reach a large outbreak, which I think we’re on the verge of – I hope it doesn’t become any larger, but I suspect it will – then that is the time to go and have that discussion with your GP,” she said.
“ … Yes, this is the time that people who are under age 60 should be talking to their GP about what is best for them as an individual.
“GPs know their patients and know what advice to give them.”
The comments follow the Commonwealth officially categorising southeast Queensland as a hotspot late Monday, which sees new ATAGI advice apply.
That advice is that, in a large outbreak, the benefits of being vaccinated to avoid contracting Covid-19 outweigh the risk of rare side effects that can occur through the AstraZeneca shot.
Dr Young had been previously criticised for comments she made during the southeast’s previous lockdown, when she said she did not want young people to get AstraZeneca because she didn’t want to see a young person die from potential side effects of the vaccine.
On Monday she repeated: “I said I didn’t want 18-year-olds to have AstraZeneca. And I still don’t.”
On Tuesday, she told The Courier-Mail that doctors knew how to safely monitor patients they decided could be safely inoculated and that Australia had not recorded deaths from side effects like had happened in some overseas cases.
Meanwhile Health Minister Yvette D’Ath accepted 150,000 extra AstraZeneca shots offered by the Commonwealth and wants them to start rolling out in GPs and pharmacists this week.
“So I asked the Commonwealth, do whatever accreditation or approvals you need to give today, get the 150,000 vaccines here tomorrow and we will ensure that more Queenslanders are getting vaccinated by the end of the week,” she said.
Meanwhile, just 20 per cent of 60 to 69-year-olds have had both doses of vaccine and only 42 per cent of the 70-plus age group has.
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