COVID-19 vaccines protect us against harm and death from other causes

The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that healthcare systems operate with strictly limited resources, workforce constraints, and variable accessibility.1,2 Throughout the pandemic, we have witnessed health sectors of entire countries, both developing and advanced, brought to the brink of collapse.3 We now face this situation in Australia with New South Wales struggling to cope with growing […]

Majority of COVID-19 patients admitted to ICUs unvaccinated

The majority of people with COVID-19 admitted to intensive care units since Australia’s national vaccine rollout began were unvaccinated, new figures have revealed. Led by Monash University, SPRINT-SARI is a hospital-based surveillance database that was set up to enable the real-time tracking and reporting of the sickest patients with COVID-19 in Australian hospitals and ICUs. […]

Updated contraindications and precautionary advice for COVID-19 vaccines

Three safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are now being rolled out in Australia. In this article, we summarise the evidence and recommendations regarding contraindications and precautionary advice regarding the Pfizer/Comirnaty, AstraZeneca/Vaxzeveria, and Moderna/Spikevax vaccines. Several COVID-19 vaccines have been developed to protect people against ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2’ (or ‘SARS-CoV-2’). From late September […]

The struggle of being a carer and mother during COVID

I consider myself an easy going, adaptable person who can usually see both sides of an argument – but negotiating through the healthcare system during a pandemic was next level. My name is Sarah and have been a nurse and midwife in the public sector for 12 years. I am a mother of 16 month […]