Are the vaccines safe?

Transcript of Are the vaccines safe?

So the COVID-19 vaccines have been extensively tested for safety in the clinical trials before they're introduced into the population.

But like any other vaccine or any other medicine, the vaccines do have side effects.

And in fact, the COVID-19 vaccines have common and expected side effects that occur really quite often, up to half to three quarters of people may experience a sore arm or headache, fatigue or lethargy or muscle aches or even fever.

So people need to expect that they will experience those side effects in the one to two days after having the vaccine.

They may need Panadol or Nurofen, very uncommonly they may need a day at home or a day off work.

But those things are to be expected and they do occur really commonly.

The more serious side effects are, of course, very rare.

And they include things like anaphylaxis or a severe allergic reaction, which occurs anywhere from one to five per million doses.

And the other serious adverse event is the Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, or TTS, that has been shown to occur with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

And that is also very rare.

And the only risk factor so far that has been identified for the clotting syndrome is age, and it occurs more commonly in younger people, people under the age of 60, where the risk is estimated to be probably 31 people per million or 3.1 per  And then for people over the age of 60, it's about 1.8 per 100,000 or 18 per million.