Kim Mulholland

Inserted 3 years ago

“We know that older people who have already been vaccinated in China and the Middle East have responded as well to the vaccines as younger people. So the argument that older people should not be vaccinated because they have not been included in trials in Indonesia is not valid. If you look at all the studies conducted in every country in the world, the evidence overwhelmingly shows the greatest risk factor for becoming gravely ill from COVID-19 is age. Even in Indonesia which has a young population, the most deaths are people over 60. So that makes me think about what my Indonesian colleagues have been telling me: that what the Indonesian government might really be trying to do is to achieve herd immunity by vaccinating young adults who are the most potent spreaders of the disease. But the problem with this strategy is that there is no evidence to suggest that vaccinations prevent recipients from acquiring and transmitting the disease. Effective vaccines have only been shown to prevent recipients from getting sick.”

Aljazeera

Professor of vaccinology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who is based at the University of Melbourne