"We need to get the vaccines with the highest efficacy," she said.Yet, highlighting the fact not all scientists agree, The Westmead Institute's Professor Tony Cunningham, a vaccine expert of 40 years, believes the "wait-and-see" option is best, with none of the vaccines yet finished and data still to be released from their phase 3 trials.
"Sometimes you never know how good a vaccine is until the trials are finished, that's happened to me with vaccines I've worked on," Professor Cunningham said. "There's just been this feverish activity," he said. "But I'd say COVID hasn't been as overwhelming as HIV, but they're rapidly different epidemics.
"Many of them were working seven days a week, almost non-stop in shifts for months on end," he told the ABC.Paul Young , said the UQ vaccine team would take a short break before reassessing the COVID situation next year.