COVID-19 vaccine optimism rising here and abroad

Optimism is rising that COVID-19 vaccines will significantly curtail the transmission of coronavirus.

A frontline worker receives the COVID-19 vaccine at Gold Coast University Hospital in Southport, Queensland, on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

Optimism is rising that COVID-19 vaccines will significantly curtail the transmission of coronavirus, with a new Israeli study indicating the Pfizer vaccine may prevent up to 90 per cent of infections.

As first vaccinations were administered in hospitals and nursing homes around the country, state premiers hailed Australia’s immunisation project as “the beginning of the end” of the pandemic that would enable the easing of coronavirus restrictions.

“This means we can be freer, we can get back to life before COVID,” said NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. “It means there’s light at the end the tunnel. It does mean that we can start thinking about overseas travel, we can start thinking about easing restrictions. These are all things we can start thinking about.”

Israel has now vaccinated nearly half of its population with at least one dose of the Pfizer jab, and data emerging from that country indicates that COVID-19 vaccines are likely to substantially prevent transmission of coronavirus.

A study by Pfizer and the Israeli Health Ministry shows the Comirnaty vaccine is 89.4 per cent effective at stopping coronavirus transmission. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed. It was conducted in January and early February, when 27 per cent of ­people aged 15 and over in Israel had been fully vaccinated. Overall, the Pfizer vaccine was 93 per cent effective in preventing hospitalisation and death, including against the more infectious UK strain.

Similar evidence of vaccines’ ability to interrupt transmission is emerging from the UK, with the British government referring to early real-world data that indicated there was a reduction in transmission of COVID-19 by two-thirds in people who have received a vaccine.

Infectious diseases physician and epidemiologist Ben Cowie, who is leading the vaccination rollout in Victoria, said the data from Israel was encouraging. “The early evidence is firstly that the actual rates of infection in those vaccinated are going down,” he said. “The vaccine protects against infection, it certainly protects against serious infection, and we’re seeing the first evidence that even amongst those infected, it reduces its ability to spread.”

The encouraging data comes as thousands of frontline health and quarantine workers together with nursing home residents and staff received their first jab around the country. From north Queensland to central Australia to Bunbury in the west, thousands of residents and staff in nursing homes received their first jab, with 60,000 vaccin­ations coming to nursing homes by the end of February.

Cleaners, security staff, airport workers and police were among the first quarantine workers to receive vaccinations, together with the highest-risk frontline health workers in emergency departments and intensive care units.

At Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, cleaner Gaya Vellangalloor Srinivasan, who works in the hotel quarantine system, was the first to receive the Pfizer vaccine. “I’m really, really happy,” she said following the jab. “I feel privileged and honoured to be the No 1 to get the vaccination. It gives me an assurance I am actually protected. It gives me a great confidence I can actually walk into the sites where I work and do my duty as normal without any fear, and go back to my family, making sure that I’m not going to be passing them anything.”

More than 1200 people in NSW received the vaccine on Monday, with 35,000 expected to be vaccinated within the next three weeks.

Hospitals in Victoria are expecting to administer between 40,000 and 50,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the first month of the rollout. More than 500 priority patients received the Pfizer vaccine on Monday. Monash Health’s medical director of infectious diseases, Rhonda Stuart, who treated Australia’s first COVID-19 patient, was the first to get the Pfizer jab in Melbourne. Professor Stuart said: “I’m really proud to be getting this and starting the next chapter in our work against COVID.”

In Queensland, 1000 people will receive vaccinations from hospital hubs this week, and more in aged care. In Western Australia, 4500 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in Perth on Sunday, and WA Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson said he was confident the initial batch would be administered within a week, with 1100 of those doses going to aged care.

The aim of Australia’s vaccination program is to prevent severe illness and death, but the news that vaccines appears to also interruption transmission will be welcome for governments.

However experts said data from Israel and the UK needed to be interpreted with some caution because the reduction in infections in those countries may be influenced by lockdowns.

Flinders University vaccinologist Nikolai Petrovsky said it was too early to know from Israeli data whether vaccines were playing a part in reducing transmission of coronavirus. “I think there’s a bit of wishful thinking going on. It really is too early to say the vaccines are impacting on transmission.”

Additional reporting: Charlie Peel, Paul Garvey, Angelica Snowden