Carrie Lam with her new Advisory Panel on Covid-19 Vaccines
Carrie’s administration is being lambasted in some quarters for slowness rolling out covid vaccinations, while others are saying hold on a moment a prudent approach is wise. Countries that have successfully controlled the pandemic such as Australia, New Zealand , Taiwan and Japan are deliberately taking a wait and see attitude to the new vaccines.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive announced at the end of last month she has appointed an Advisory Panel on Covid-19 vaccines. Led by Professor Wallace Lau Chak-sing (Head of the Department of Medicine at HKU) the panel will advise on pharmaceutical products to be purchased in the current emergency.
The four countries above taking a prudent approach to the vaccines are not expected to start inoculations until the end of February or even later. Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said he is proud of the country’s success in controlling the virus and will not be pressured into an early vaccination scheme. Most Australian states have had no local covid cases for months. New Zealand has had none since 18 November.
Australia-based Prof. Jennifer Martin, who is a member of Pharma, sole purchaser of pharmaceutical products for New Zealand, “The reason it’s such a prolonged approval process in Australia and New Zealand is because there’s lots of double-checking and re-examining of the statistics, because if we make an error, it will become an error on a big scale by the time the drug is rolled out across a large population.” Prof Martin said the vaccines may work fine for European people but prove to have different effects on Indigenous and Asian people. “Australia and NZ are saying, ‘Why would you put people at risk when if you wait a bit longer, you can get more information? ‘”
Prof. Robert Booy of the University of Sydney said it is understandable that countries in Europe and America with their millions of cases and tens of thousands of deaths should choose rapid vaccine roll-out.
Meanwhile, the US Centre of Disease Control has published statistics on allergic reactions to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Twenty-one cases of life-threatening anaphylaxic reaction had occurred in December after 1.8 million first doses. The CDC recommended ways to weed out such potential cases before they get jabbed and prescribed treatments for those who suffer the reactions.
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