An infectious diseases physician says he hopes the communication and messaging around vaccines can “get back on track” in Australia.

Dr Paul Griffin has defended the nation’s expert immunisation panel, ATAGI, for “continuously observing to such great detail” and changing their advice based on risks and benefits.

“I think we need to have more faith in the regulator but I also think we need to communicate their rationale a bit better, as to why that advice has been tending to change very frequently,” he told Scott Emerson.

“It’s very much because the situation we are in has changed as so the advice changes accordingly.”

He said there was miscommunication and medical experts undermining AstraZeneca.

“I think we need to get our communication back on track in this country, not just about AstraZeneca, but about the vaccines as a whole,” he said.

“And also what we are hoping to prevent here is what’s happening in NSW, and potentially what’s going to be like that but much worse when we do start to open up, even though the rest of the country sees themselves as very low risk right now, really this virus hasn’t gone away and with how much of it around us, the risk in our country is still going to be very significant for some a very long time to come, and the way to prevent that causing the problems we know it can is to get vaccinated.”

Press PLAY below to hear more about his insights into the ‘miscommunication’

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