Australia Covid live update: Atagi co-chair says AstraZeneca should only be used by under-40s in ‘pressing’ circumstances

Atagi’s view is they should have Pfizer rather than AstraZeneca.

The question is do we have sufficient Pfizer to protect people in time so that they don’t get Covid which would be far worse than having an AstraZeneca vaccine.

It is not a question of should it be AstraZeneca or Pfizer. We don’t have sufficient Pfizer to vaccinate under 40s. The question is what is the alternative to vaccinating under-40s?

And we should compare the risk of giving under-40s AstraZeneca with the risk of allowing them to have Covid.

Atagi, when they met two weeks ago, were meeting at a time when there was almost no Covid in the country, we were really at a very low level. No community transmission and they made a decision based on the epidemiology back then. Things have changed already and Atagi put a rider in their recommendation which said that as long as the risk of Covid outweighs the risk of the vaccine, then anyone over the age of 18 should consider getting AstraZeneca.

I think everyone over the age of 18 needs to think about, if you’re not vaccinated already, you don’t have access to the Pfizer, what is your risk of Covid, what is your risk of AstraZeneca? Weigh that up and if I were in that category, I would be getting AstraZeneca.