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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.