Australia politics live: NSW on alert after Sydney Covid cases increase to four, Atagi recommends raising age for AstraZeneca vaccine to 60

They’ve balanced the risk and benefit of the vaccine in the context where we are right now in Australia, in relation to the Covid 19 pandemic, and also with an eye to what might happen over the coming months and I think that’s a really important message – AstraZeneca remains a very effective vaccine.

The benefit of AstraZeneca in the over 60s remains much higher than the risk of this particularly rare but sometimes serious syndrome.

And so people over 60 should still be rolling up to their GP or wherever they are getting their AstraZeneca vaccine, and get that first dose.

The second important component of the advice is that anyone who has had a first dose of AstraZeneca without problem should feel very confident to have their second dose, and they should keep that booking.

Go and talk to your GP about it if you’re concerned but on the basis of information we have in Australia we have not had a single case of this particular syndrome in a second dose, but we have not had many second doses in Australia, but in the UK they’ve had almost 16 million second doses of AstraZeneca, and the rate of this particular rare but sometimes serious condition is much, much lower, around 1.5 per million, which is way lower than the first dose, across all age groups.