Topic 9.4
How do organisations contribute to vaccine safety?
Vaccines undergo rigorous testing and evaluation to ensure their safety and effectiveness before being made available to the public. In Australia, several key organisations, including the TGA, ACV, and ATAGI, play critical roles in approving and monitoring vaccines. This page explores how these organisations work together to ensure public health and how the development of COVID-19 vaccines accelerated without compromising safety. Learn how global collaboration and prior research helped scientists respond to the pandemic at record speed.
Organisations
Proving that a vaccine is safe and effective involves a lot of people looking at the data. There are many organisations involved in assessing and approving which vaccines are funded in Australia:
- Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) – responsible for assessing vaccines and other medicines before they can be used in Australia and monitoring vaccines for safety after they are approved.
- Advisory Committee on Vaccines (ACV) – An independent committee of medical and scientific experts that advises the TGA on whether to register a vaccine for use in Australia.
- Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) – Advises the Federal Minister for Health on what vaccines should be funded by the government on the National Immunisation Program and other immunisation issues.
- National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) – Independent research organisation that provides scientific expert advice on all aspects of immunisation and vaccine-preventable diseases.
- Internationally, the World Health Organization (WHO) also has an advisory group, The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE), that advises the WHO on global vaccine-related strategies and policies.
If the usual vaccine testing process takes so long, how did COVID-19 vaccines happen so quickly?
Covid-19 Process
Usually, vaccines are tested one step at a time. Phase I, then Phase II etc.
Because the COVID-19 pandemic was so dangerous, some of the Phases were done at the same time. This took a lot more money and people than most vaccines.
There are also other viruses that are very similar to COVID-19, such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). Because scientists had already studied these, it made COVID-19 easier to study.