AUSTRALIA does not need the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to rush through its approval process for COVID-19 vaccines, the Advisory Committee for Vaccines Chair, Allen Cheng, believes.
Responding to calls for emergency approvals of COVID vaccines (COVAX), Cheng, who is also Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases President, said Australia was in a "different position" to other countries where vaccines have been granted emergency use authorisations or temporary approvals.
As part of a thread published on Twitter yesterday, Cheng stressed the need for the TGA to ensure that COVAX are "effective, safe and made to a high quality".
"Most vaccines are given to millions of people who are otherwise well to prevent disease - this is very different to treatments that are given to people who are unwell," he said.
"We want to know that there is a correct amount of vaccine in each dose.
"We want to know they are free from contamination...that there are no differences between different batches or those made in different factories.
"We need to know the shelf-life under different conditions... whether they can be used safely in pregnant or breastfeeding women.
"Whether they can be given with other vaccines such as the flu vaccine.
"For COVID vaccines, we have published papers that report that the vaccines appear to be effective and generally safe.
"Many people think that published papers are the gold standard in evidence, but they just scrape the surface of what we want to know.
"Ultimately, the question is whether the benefit of using the vaccine outweighs the known risks and the uncertainties.
"Countries where there are hundreds or thousands of deaths each day are clearly willing to tolerate some uncertainty to prevent this, and this is appropriate.
"But we're in a different position in Australia - even with the current situation in NSW and Victoria, we can afford to wait for the TGA to do its job and make sure we're getting a safe, effective and quality vaccine."
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