Australia will not rush to approve a COVID-19 vaccine until comprehensive data on the potential risks is vigorously analysed and made available.
The Federal Government has endured mounting pressure for a coronavirus vaccine to be approved for use in Australia, with critics calling for the process to be expedited as NSW and Victoria battle virus flare-ups.
Other countries around the world have approved vaccines in quick haste, with millions of people already vaccinated in China and the US.
The nation's leading health experts have stood by Prime Minister Scott Morrison's tough stance, emphasising the safety of Australians cannot be compromised.
Australian National University infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon told 9news.com.au the process was technically already "rushed" as the approval process was being conducted at least two to three times quicker than the usual speed for a vaccine.
"It's being done with extraordinary speed," he said.
"If you rush it, you are likely to waste vaccine and you may well be rolling out something before you have the full data of safety."
Professor Collignon said the world only had preliminary data on the vaccines, including potential side-effects.
Dr Allen Cheng, Victoria's Deputy Chief Health Officer and Chair of the Advisory Committee for Vaccines, said published papers of evidence only just "scrape the surface of what we want to know".
https://twitter.com/peripatetical/status/1346036238680285185
In the Pfizer study, a third of participants who received the jab in the placebo arm experienced side effects of fatigue and headache.
The phase three studies, which generally included about 20,000 to 25,000 people, were sufficient enough to exclude the moderately uncommon side effects, but not the serious and rare ones, which include those occurring in less than one in 10,000 people, Dr Cheng said.
"If you see a single case of a serious side effect, it can be hard to work out if it is chance or something to worry about," he wrote on Twitter.
"An example are the cases of transverse myelitis (spinal cord inflammation) that were reported in the AstraZeneca trial."
Three cases in the study experienced spinal cord inflammation.
The side effect occurred in one case 14 days after the vaccine, in another case 10 days after but believed to be due to pre-existing multiple sclerosis, and a third case emerged in the control group.
Other side effects picked up post rollout include cases of anaphylaxis that have been reported in the UK and the US.
READ MORE: Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs begin for first patients in the UK
"Ultimately, the question is whether the benefit of using the vaccine outweighs the known risks and the uncertainties," Dr Cheng said.
"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."
Israel is leading the pack in the vaccine race, with 14.4 doses administered per 100 people, according to Oxford University data.
The rate is the highest in the world, followed by Bahrain, the UK and the US.
More than 12.9 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered across 30 countries so far, including 4.5 million in the US, 4.5 million in China and 1.2 million in Israel.
Professor Collignon said countries such as those in Europe, Israel, US and the UK had only given emergency approval of the vaccine due to their perilous COVID-19 death rates.
"We shouldn't do experiments before we see more data because we're not in an emergency situation," he said.
"They have uncontrolled infections and lots of deaths.
"Australia should not be at the front of the queue.
"We don't have uncontrolled spread, in fact, we've got little spread."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison shared the same view as the experts, telling 3AW today Australia was not in urgent need of a vaccine compared to other countries, which would see shortcuts taken if approved at this stage.
"They are in a position where they have no other choice because of the terrible situation they find themselves in," he said.
The final agreement between the Australian government and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was solidified on Christmas Eve, with 10 million doses to be made available for a March rollout if the vaccine is approved by regulators.
Australia also has vaccine agreements with Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Novavax.
President of the Australian Medical Association Dr Omar Khorshid told Today the ethical debate was one that needed more attention, rather than the push to quickly roll out a vaccine.
"It's more important to be given to people in Europe than it is in Australia," he said.
"There's a real ethical question as to whether we should be taking doses of this vaccine from other countries that are needing it more than us.
"But hopefully if the AstraZeneca vaccine gets approved it will be manufactured here and we'll have our own source for Australians and plenty of vaccine for every Australian."
Public distribution of an approved vaccine is expected to be begin as early as March in Australia.
However, Professor Collignon warned a vaccine would not make the world "go back to normal".
"I think people get the impression once we vaccinate the problem will go away – but that's not realistic," he said.
"It's not going to be an instant fix. We are going to have to live with this problem for another year or two at least.
"You have to have all the world vaccinated for the world to go back to normal like in 2019."
