While it remains to be seen if 2021 will, as some have suggested, be the year COVID-19 is turned into the common cold, this week's double dose of excellent vaccine news is the shot in the arm Australians have been looking for.
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On Monday, after months of waiting, the first 142,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived - prompting Health Minister Greg Hunt to quip "the eagle has landed" - and are now being dispatched to vaccination centres around the country.
The other good news was Tuesday's very welcome announcement by the Therapeutic Goods Administration that it had approved the AstraZeneca virus for use in people over the age of 18.
This is the vaccine the majority of Australians are expected to receive given that in addition to the almost four million doses being sourced from overseas another 50 million doses are to be manufactured by CSL in Melbourne. Up to one million doses a week will be available from the end of March.
Hotel quarantine workers, our first line of defence against overseas sourced infections, are to be among the first to be immunised with the Pfizer vaccine when inoculations begin next week. This is in line with the government's recent pledge to have vaccinations occurring by late February. And, because Australia has not had to resort to an emergency roll-out of its program to quell massive rates of infections and soaring death tolls, federal, state, and territory medical authorities have been able to learn from what has been happening overseas.
Key lessons have included that, despite initial concerns in Norway, the Pfizer vaccine is safe for the elderly, and that there are effective ways to get around possible wastage as a result of having multiple doses in the one vial.
And, most importantly, it has been confirmed that the vaccines do the job. While the jury is still out on how effective both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are at controlling the spread of COVID-19 we do know for sure and for certain that once you are vaccinated even if you do contract the virus you will only suffer from a highly attenuated form of the illness. Both of the vaccines that have been approved for Australia to date do an excellent job of preventing serious illness and death.
In Europe and America rates of infections are slowly coming down, hospital admissions - especially into intensive care - are falling, and the numbers of deaths are also decreasing. While much of this is attributed to other public health measures, such as lockdowns and more mask-wearing, things are certainly moving in the right direction and the impact of widespread vaccination will soon and inevitably be felt.
In Australia, where there is effectively no community transmission, no current risk of the hospital system being overwhelmed, and no horrendous death toll, the vaccine's greatest value is its capacity to protect the broader community in the event of outbreaks caused by escapes from hotel quarantine such as the ones we have seen in recent weeks.
It is to be hoped that by mid-October, the time the authorities believe everybody will have had the opportunity to be vaccinated, it won't be necessary to lock down an entire state just because a case escapes from quarantine into the community.
This could also make the "on-again off-again" border closures, which have caused so much hardship, economic chaos, and personal distress, a thing of the past.
All of this however depends on the vaccination program going to plan, and on all Australians rolling up their sleeves.
From here on out it really is up to us.