People who don't want the Covid 19 vaccine
Your article mentions that many Australians don't want the vaccine because it was developed too quickly. I find it annoying/disgraceful that the Australian national and state health people have not taken up this specific point and mentioned/explained, many times, that modern technology provides excellent resources/systems to develop vaccines much more quickly than in the past. It's a critical point, because it's obvious that the more people who are immunized the better for all of us.
Stop all the benefits of the anti vaxxers I say and when they get covid and they will, let them sell whatever they own to pay their hospital bill. Bury them in the pauper grave yard.
Second dose to come...can't wait.
I'm a traveller and miss not going abroad. The fact that I can soon go to New Zealand, feeling confident on a plane...still wearing my mask and taking voluntary precautions...makes me happy !!!
A passenger on a repatriation flight from India that landed in Darwin on Saturday has tested positive for COVID-19.
NT Health says the passenger is in quarantine at the Howard Springs facility on the outskirts of Darwin.
The flight was the first to land in Australia from the COVID-ravaged country since the federal government implemented a travel ban — and tightened pre-departure testing measures — several weeks ago.
NT health authorities have said the measures are required to keep cases at the facility at a manageable level, warning they could consider slowing or again pausing repatriation flights if the caseload rose higher than a target cap of 50 cases.
Acting Chief Health Officer Charles Pain this morning suggested other passengers from the flight were undergoing further testing, but that the man in quarantine in Darwin was the only confirmed case so far.
"I have news this morning that probably only one — they're still subject to further testing — but only one person has tested positive in that group," he said.
"So the testing that was done in India has clearly been effective and has had the effect that we intended, which was that people wouldn't come on the flights if they were positive."
About half of the 150 passengers intending to board the plane were turned away after either testing positive or being deemed close contacts of positive cases.
Those left behind in Delhi have since urged authorities to reconsider their screening processes after the ABC revealed at least three of the rejected passengers have since tested negative to COVID-19.
Dr Pain acknowledged those people were disappointed and warned more people could return negative tests upon further screening.
"It's expected that they will re-join the testing queue or the queue to get on those flights as soon as possible," he said.
"It's expected that some of those people who tested positive will return negative tests.
"That's the way it works, I'm afraid. We welcome those people when they come on future flights."
How COVID-19 vaccines were developed in record time, without compromising safety
When Ebola exploded across West Africa in 2014, it took more than five years to get a vaccine approved by drug regulators.
Fast forward to 2020, and researchers were able to develop multiple protective coronavirus vaccines and get them authorised within 12 months of the virus being discovered.
It's a spectacular and unparalleled scientific achievement — and promises to help bring the pandemic under control.
But it's left some people wondering: if vaccines normally take years to develop, just how did we get here so fast?
It can be tempting to think that COVID-19 vaccine development kicked off when the pandemic did. In reality, scientists had spent years building vaccine technologies that could be quickly adapted to emerging viral threats — sometimes known as 'Disease X'.
Thanks to funding bodies like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), researchers at Oxford University had been working on a vaccine that could be quickly tweaked to target COVID-19.
The technology involves using a harmless common cold virus (that infects chimpanzees) and engineering it to carry proteins of other viruses you want to protect against.
The research meant that as soon as the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) became available, the Oxford team was able to use the virus's genetic blueprint to modify their vaccine and begin testing it in clinical trials.
Similarly, development of a different vaccine approach, using mRNA technology — used in both Pfizer's and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines — allowed researchers to work much faster than if they had relied on traditional vaccine methods, such as using weakened or inactivated parts of the virus.
Like the Oxford vaccine, the mRNA vaccines could be made fast because they only required the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, and not a sample of the actual virus.
Vaccine research costs money — a lot of money — and often this can be difficult to secure.
Less so in a pandemic, it turns out, and in the face of widespread social and economic devastation.
Thanks to billions of dollars from governments, the private sector, and funding bodies like CEPI, researchers had access to immediate and substantial funding for COVID-19 vaccines.
This meant multiple clinical trials were launched quickly, and pharmaceutical companies were able to manufacture and stockpile vaccines before they even knew if they were effective.
In normal circumstances, drug companies never hedge their bets like this — it would be too costly if their vaccine failed and the doses had to be scrapped.
But in a pandemic, having the right infrastructure in place and vaccine doses ready to go is critical, so governments assumed bigger financial risks.
Read the rest here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-01-29/how-covid-vaccines-were-developed-in-record-time/13096682