Hospitalisations and death are happening in unvaccinated people
An infectious disease expert has said while Australia’s completed vaccinations have helped individuals, the small rollout has not been enough to provide any community benefit.
Speaking with A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw, leading infectious diseases expert Professor Sharon Lewin said the vaccines we have rolled out “absolutely will have an impact on every individual that’s been vaccinated”.
“People that get vaccinated have a reduction in risk in going to hospital, or death, by over 95 per cent,” the Doherty Institute professor said.
“They have a reduction in transmitting the virus.”
But she said the problem was the end game of herd immunity.
“Have we vaccinated enough people to get a real community benefit? We are not at that level yet,” she said.
Professor Lewin also said COVID-19 vaccination numbers are currently too small in Australia and that it is still unclear whether our vaccination rate here would have any effect on hospitilisations or deaths.
“When we look at countries that have a lot more COVID-19, vaccination makes a huge difference,” she said.
“If you look in just the US over just the month of May, hundreds of thousands of hospitalisations with COVID and 18,000 deaths and less than 0.1 per cent of those people were vaccinated,” she said.
“So, all of that hospitalisations and death are happening in unvaccinated people.”
Earlier today, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt revealed just 7.1 per cent of Australians have been fully vaccinated.
More than 7.5 million doses have been administered nationwide.
Of those, 5.95 million are first doses, equating to 28.9 per cent of the eligible population.
More than 1.47 million have been secondary doses, making up 7.1 per cent of the eligible population.
