Crikey Talks Peter Doherty

The pandemic isn’t going away any time soon, but the world is on the right path to manage COVID-19 and set itself up for future emergencies. 

Winner of the 1996 joint Nobel Prize for medicine, 1997 Australian of the Year, medical researcher and immunologist Professor Peter Doherty — who had Melbourne’s Doherty Institute named after him for his achievements — spoke to Crikey columnist Janine Perrett and associate editor Amber Schultz on what more can be done, where Australia went wrong, and the importance of pandemic preparedness in the latest Crikey Talks subscribers’ event. 

What went wrong with our vaccine rollout?

Australia’s vaccine rollout has been disastrous. But in mid-2020, things were looking OK. We had a deal to manufacture AstraZeneca onshore, the University of Queensland was developing a vaccine, and we had deals with Novavax and Pfizer. Where did it all go wrong? 

The UQ vaccine was abandoned after showing false-positive HIV readings — something that was always a risk given the vaccine uses the HIV protein as a molecular clamp. 

“It’s a pity [it was abandoned] because it looked to be a very good vaccine,” Doherty said.

One of the reasons the positive HIV reading was problematic, Doherty says, was because CSL, the company partnered with UQ to manufacture the vaccine, produces blood products. Producing a vaccine that undermined the efficacy of one of its blood products such as HIV tests wasn’t something CSL would be likely to agree to, he says.

Doherty said it was clear Australia had put all its eggs into two vaccine baskets, and stressed the need for it to develop MRNA vaccine capabilities, which is the technology Pfizer and Moderna use. MRNA vaccines are the way of the future, he says, and new influenza vaccines are likely to use this technology. 

How long will this last?

Australia’s COVID-19 outbreak has stretched across multiple states and caused a cluster in New Zealand. We thought the pandemic would end in 2020, but here we are in lockdown again in 2021. Thankfully Doherty believes next year will be different — although stressed there are no guarantees. 

“We’re doing an experiment that no one has quite done … by vaccinating in the face of an outbreak,” he said. 

The Doherty Institute modelling guides Australia’s four-phase plan for a vaccinated Australia, with some restrictions eased once 70% of those over 16 are vaccinated.

“We’d be very courageous to open up widely at 70%, and pretty courageous to open up widely at 80% [of over 16s vaccinated],” he said. 

A key concern was increased transmission and infection among children with the Delta variant. 

“You don’t want kids in adult hospitals being cared for by adult internists,” he said. “You want them cared for by paediatric staff.

“The modelling at least gives you something to shoot for. We can’t keep doing what we’re going, that much is obvious. The important part of it all is that all of us need to get vaccinated.” 

What can we do to prepare for future pandemics? 

To prepare for future pandemics — and there will be more — we need more global transparency about potential outbreaks, Doherty says. 

And rapid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) needs to be embraced — something that’s already happening with people tested for diseases at a rate like never before. 

One of the best things Australia could be doing, he says, is investing in antiviral drugs which can treat a range of viruses in one — from influenza to the common cold to SARS-COVID-2. 

“All those viruses that are potential pandemic threats, we need to get drugs made against them, we need to get stockpiles of drugs that we can deploy immediately if we get a novel pandemic goes by one of these things,” Doherty said. 

The next thing the world needed to focus on, he says, is climate change: “We all have to vote and we all have to get vaccinated.”

And he speaks his mind on social media about climate change, vaccinations and battling misinformation.

Subscribers can watch the webinar — which includes Doherty doing his best David Attenborough impression — on Crikey in the coming days.