Australia’s chief medical officer defends AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine amid efficacy concerns

Australia has secured 54m doses of the vaccine some experts say is inferior to Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, which Australia has bought just 10m doses of

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  • Australia’s chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly and infectious diseases experts have defended securing 54m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine made by Oxford University and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, amid concerns the vaccine will not be effective enough to achieve herd immunity.

    The president of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology, Prof Stephen Turner, told Nine media that Australia should halt the AstraZeneca vaccine rollout because it has “lower efficacy”.

    Related: Australia’s Covid vaccines: everything you need to know

    The choice we have is not whether to use one or the other, it is whether to use what we have

    Related: ‘How dare you leave’: confusion remains for some Victorians stranded interstate

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