The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday, University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely argued Australia’s major risk is now “the virus getting back in, through leakage from quarantine and international arrivals”.
Vaccinating border staff would directly target that risk, he wrote. One major hurdle to this approach is that it's not yet clear if first-generation COVID-19 vaccines will stop a person being able to catch and transmit the virus.
Tests in animals suggest the vaccines may protect against severe illness but still allow the virus to replicate in the nose and spread from person to person.
Human clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines – the only ones approved so far – have not yet answered that question.