Wagga Base Hospital has been named as one of 11 NSW hospitals that will be vaccination sites for the administration of Phase 1a of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.
However, former surgeon and Snowy Valleys councillor Geoff Pritchard has reservations about people rushing to get it.
“I’m pretty optimistic about it but I still have reservations,” he said.
“It takes many years to work out the efficiency and safety of any vaccine, and it is going to come out in phases,” he said.
He believes the answer of whether or not all people should get the vaccine would be revealed gradually over the next few months.
“There is so much money being put into the research,” he said.
“Before you can give definitive advice, you need to see the results being published in reputable medical journals. Before that is done, you can’t take anything from anywhere as fact.”
Cr Pritchard has not made a firm decision of whether or not he will get the vaccine, but says he probably will. He spend many years working as a surgeon at Prince Henry Hospital, and infectious disease hospital in Sydney.
“We had many different infectious diseases going through that hospital, and I am still to this day not sure about some vaccines,” he said.
“As a young child (Cr Pritchard is 86) there were very few vaccines. We all got chicken pox and German measles, mumps, diptheria; we all got this as a routine,” he said.
“They are all pretty safe and effective, but obviously some of them do have effects.’
He said that epidemics had been going on for as long as people have existed.
“Mankind has developed immunities and so forth,” he said.
“There will be more of these plagues coming out periodically, and at a quicker rate because we are so overpopulated, and I think we need to plan for minimising the effect in the long term; doing what we are doing already, but building it into our future.
Bush Chemist pharmacist Luke Peacock agrees that everyone should get the vaccine when it is available.
“Yes, absolutely,” he said.
“Anyone who is ordinarily suitable to get a flu vaccine should get it.”
Mr Peacock concedes that a “large number of other considerations’ would arise regarding the vaccine but said that it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to get it.
On the street in Tumut on Friday, people seemed happy to get the vaccine when it becomes available.
Tumut’s Tony Fenn will have no hesitation.
“Yes absolutely; you would be crazy not to take any assistance that’s available,” he said.
“Science has kept us alive this far; why wouldn’t we keep going?”
Lyn Randall of Adelong agreed.
“Yes, I’d be willing,” she said.
“You would hope it is going to help and is the right way to go.”
John Sheahan, who has a business in Tumut and lives in Jugiong, would also get it.
“Yes, if everybody gets it, it will be a lot better,” he said.
“It will allow the country to stay head of it. Having said that, I don’t think there will be a big rush to get it in Australia.”
Jenny Malone of Tumut said she would end up getting it, and hopes others will too..
“We will end up getting a herd immunity where everyone is protected,” she said.
“I hope as many people as possible get it.”
One resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said he would get the vaccine when it was “tried and true”.
