Tom Lee who got the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines tells The Project he wanted as many covid antibodies as possible

The Sydney man who got both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines has told The Project he is feeling “pretty good” about his decision.

The Sydney man, who received four doses coronavirus vaccine, has defended his decision on The Project but admitting people have mixed reactions about the move.

Tom Lee, 34, rejected Waleed Aly’s suggestion that he may have been taking a shot out of the arm of someone else who needed to be vaccinated.

“I don’t think I was. I was as entitled to Pfizer as anyone else. I had the AstraZeneca, I took the risk with AstraZeneca as other people are doing and I thought that I earned the right to Pfizer by doing that,” he said. “I have been telling peopleand there are a range of reactions to it. I just wanted to be fully vaccinated and have as many antibodies against the coronavirus as I could. We are in the middle of an outbreak here and I am feeling pretty good about it now.”

Tom Lee after he got his AstraZeneca vaccine in March.

“For that last Pfizer shot that I had last Monday I had to go through south west Sydney and I was a bit spooked I thought ‘God are the three jabs I have had enough?’ but now I feel like I could go for a walk through south west Sydney and I’ll be all right,” he said.

Mr Lee said he had done his homework and found that mixing vaccines was an effective way to fight off the virus, something Australian health officials haven’t endorsed yet.

“I didn’t go into it blind there have been studies on mixing the vaccines. I read the summary about a study done in England where they were mixing AstraZeneca with Pfizer and the results were good. Apparently 10 times the amount of antibodies in the mix then anyone was getting on plain AstraZeneca. When the opportunity to get Pfizer came up I thought ‘let’s go, let’s do it, let’s get as many antibodies as you can get’,” he said.

“I read today that one of the medical workers in Sydney who was fully vaccinated has got the coronavirus maybe if she did the same thing I did then she wouldn’t have got the virus.”

While most under-40s struggle to get one Covid-19 vaccine shot, 34-year-old Sydneysider Tom Lee has managed to have four.
He’d already picked up two shots of AstraZeneca and as of this week, he’s scored two Pfizer. We chat with Tom to find out why… #TheProjectTVpic.twitter.com/Vg9Sfozw9n

— The Project (@theprojecttv) July 15, 2021

Nations including South Korea, Canada and Spain have already approved vaccine mixing.

Germany’s vaccine committee recommended mixing vaccines earlier this month, saying studies showed the immune response was “clearly superior” when AstraZeneca was combined with an mRNA vaccine – the technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna shots.