WEBVTT

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Hello and welcome to Science in 5.

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I'm Vismita Gupta-Smith and these 
are WHO's conversations in science.

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We're going to continue 
our conversation on vaccines

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with Dr Katherine O'Brien.

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Welcome, Kate.

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Thank you, I'm really pleased 
to be with you again today.

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Kate, in countries where people 
have a choice of more than one vaccine,

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they're wondering 
which vaccine to take.

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How do experts like you advise them?

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Well, Vismita, you know,

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the world doesn't have 
enough vaccine right now

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to immunize everybody 
who needs the vaccine.

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So, we have a really simple 
answer to this question,

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which is when you're offered a vaccine,

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you should take the vaccine 
that you're offered.

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We have a number of vaccines 
that have been demonstrated

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to be safe, efficacious and to be 
manufactured with high quality.

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And so, any of these vaccines

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are ones that are going 
to actually protect you.

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If you live in a country where there's 
more than one vaccine in the program,

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you should consider yourself lucky
that you have access to the vaccine.

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And when it's your turn
to actually get vaccine,

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that's the time when you should get it
and accept what vaccine is offered to you.

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If you're a person in a high risk category

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and you've been one of the early people
to get vaccine,

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that's something that you should do 
as quickly as possible

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so that you're protected.

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And for people who are later 
in the queue, like me,

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who work in an office

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and don't have any substantial 
high risk exposures,

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it's just our job to wait our turn.

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We will get vaccinated

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and we should accept the vaccine 
that's offered

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regardless of what vaccine that is.

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So Kate, when anyone goes for vaccination,

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they may be wondering about side effects.

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How do experts understand 
the risks of these vaccines

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and how would you explain it,

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these side effects that you're seeing?

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How would you explain that to the public?

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There's a method to look for 
common side effects in the clinical trials

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and then rare side effects

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which are constantly surveyed for

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in the routine use of vaccines.

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One of the things that I think 
people are concerned about

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is a lot of information 
in the media recently

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about blood clots.

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And this is a topic that 
the WHO is looking at carefully,

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regulators in Europe and around the world
are looking at very carefully.

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We're in the midst
of collecting information

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about these very rare events 
that seem to be happening

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in the sort of one per million, 
10 per million kind of frequency.

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I think it's important 
for people to remember

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that the reason that we're vaccinating

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is because we are
in the midst of a pandemic

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and we all have risk of COVID infection

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and COVID disease that exceeds 
the risk of these very rare events.

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Nevertheless, what's important is
to assess from a numbers perspective,

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from a risk perspective,

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the benefit that vaccines confer,

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and the very small risk

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that these rare events
might be associated with vaccines.

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So, both regulators and policymakers
are looking very carefully at these data,

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understanding why they're occurring, 
where they're occurring,

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in whom they're occurring,

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and trying to identify whether 
there are specific groups of people

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who are more at risk 
for some of these events,

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which it doesn't seem to be,

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and balancing that very rare 
and low risk against

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the benefit of protection 
against COVID disease.

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People around the world are 
working together

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to make sure that information 
from anywhere in the world

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is actually collected together

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and informs our understanding 
of both risk and benefit.

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There are regulators in every 
country and there are

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policymakers in every country.

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And there is a system where 
information is shared up

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through these regulatory 
committees and onto WHO,

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where we also have an external 
expert group that looks at

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safety data that's coming in 
from all parts of the world.

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So, it is these reviews of the evidence

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and as that evidence changes 
over time, where these expert

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committees on safety make 
assessments of the benefit and the risk.

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In addition to that, we also 
have policymakers who are

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equally looking at these data 
and providing not only

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within countries, but also at 
the global level here at WHO,

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through the Strategic Advisory 
Group of Experts on immunization,

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recommendations to countries

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for that balance of benefit and 
risk and how to minimise any

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risks that might otherwise be present.

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Thank you, Kate.

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That was Science in 5 today.

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Until next time then.

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Stay safe, stay healthy and 
stick with science.