Welcome to another update on COVID. I'm Professor Bob Graham at the Victor Chang
Cardiac Research Institute. So we've come a long way in the pandemic and fortunately
Australia has done very well but I'm sure those of you with heart disease are worried
now because we're coming into the time when we're starting to get the vaccine.
I guess the first question a lot of you might have is 'Is the vaccine safe for people who have
got heart disease?' The answer is that both the Pfizer vaccine - that's going to be available for
some of us in Australia - and the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine have been shown to be
safe in people with heart disease so I would urge you to take it because if you don't the
chances of getting serious illness with COVID are very high in people with cardiovascular disease.
'What do heart disease patients need to know before being vaccinated?'
There's no indication that the vaccine will interfere with their medications.
A lot of the people in the trials that had heart disease were on medications and there were no
problems because of that. The only concerns that heart disease patients might have is if they
have a known allergy to any of the ingredients in the vaccines or to previous vaccinations,
and also if they're on blood thinners. A lot of heart patients are on blood thinners, that
doesn't preclude you from getting the vaccine - in fact you should still get it. It may mean that
you'll get a bit more bruising or you get a bit of bleeding at the site where you have the injection
and that can easily be stopped by putting pressure on for a reasonable period of time to stop the
bleeding. So there's no contraindication to heart disease patients getting the vaccine.
'Should I be concerned about the side effects?' Look the worst case scenario
is if you don't get the vaccine and you get COVID because you're at a much higher risk.
So the risk-benefit ratio for heart disease patients is enormous.
For patients who don't have heart disease, the risk-benefit ratio is anywhere between 2,200:1 to
220,000:1 that you're going to be worse off if you don't get the vaccine and you contract COVID.
So the risk-benefit ratio favours people with heart disease particularly getting the vaccine,
there are no contraindications or no known side effects in people who have got heart disease
in terms of getting the vaccine so there's no reason not to get it.
'Is it safe to have multiple vaccinations together?' There's no evidence that having more
than one vaccine worries people. Don't forget all of us have had things like DPT which is
diphtheria pertussis toxin tetanus which is three vaccines given all at once and then most of us
every you get a flu jab as well. Our body's very good at coping with these vaccines and they
stimulate different cells to produce different antibodies so there's no evidence that having a
heart condition will cause you problems if you have multiple vaccines and certainly if you've
got a heart condition you should not only have the COVID vaccine but you should also have a flu shot
once a year and probably a Pneumovax to prevent you from getting pneumonia once a year as well.
'Which vaccine is suitable for patients with heart disease?'
They both protect people who have got heart disease, they also protect people who are older,
and they also protect people from different ethnic groups - so they both seem to be very protective.
The Pfizer vaccine seems to protect people after you've had two doses, both of them require
two doses, to the extent of about 94% reducing serious illnesses and the AstraZeneca about 70%.
But even those who got COVID, none of them required hospitalisation if they've had the
Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine so both of them seem to provide very good protection from serious disease.
'How long will the protection from the vaccine last?' We don't know the answer for how long. The
COVID virus is mutating, it mutates more slowly than the flu virus,
the flu virus has to be given every year - we think now, we hope, that that the COVID
vaccine will last a lot longer than that so that hopefully you don't have to get a jab every year
but if you do it's not the end of the world because it is providing enormous protection.
'Are there any grounds for vaccination exemption?' The only grounds for not having a vaccine is if
you've got a known allergy to any of the constituents of the vaccine which is very,
very rare, or if you've got an immune problem where you can't amount an immune response.
There was a very interesting case recently at Harvard where somebody had a very serious
immune response and what was interesting about that case was that the patient,
his virus, seemed to change very quickly and it seemed to evolve much more quickly
than in normal people and we think that's where these new strains are coming from.
In fact, people who've got immune problems are producing different strains of virus very quickly
and they're exactly the sort of people we need to protect because they're the ones
who then shed the virus and give it out to the community and then it starts to spread.
'Will COVID-19 vaccines need to be updated to best new variants?' Well look every year
we have to produce a new vaccine for the flu, as I mentioned before the COVID,
the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, doesn't seem to be mutating as quickly so
hopefully the vaccine will be good but it wouldn't surprise me that in a few years
time we may need to modify the vaccine so that is effective against new strains.
'Final words?' Look I would urge you strongly to consider having the vaccine because,
as I mentioned, the risk-benefit ratio is so much in favor of having the vaccine against not
having it. If you don't have the vaccine and you've got a heart problem and you get COVID,
your chances of getting serious illness are very much higher than somebody who doesn't
have heart disease. Particularly if you've got heart function that's not as good as normal
and they're the sort of people who've got atrial fibrillation, who have had coronary heart disease,
who've got congenital heart disease etc., so they're the sort of people who should be very
much pushing themselves to the front of the queue and getting the vaccine.
Thank you again for joining us at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute for another update
on COVID, and particularly for those people who've got cardiovascular heart problems because they're
the group that we're most interested in and I'm sure if you have heart problems you're interested
in whether or not you should take the vaccine and as I mentioned I'd encourage you to seriously
think about having it because the risk-benefit ratio is so much in favour of the vaccine.