The under-40s rolling up their sleeves for AstraZeneca

“We know we’re not going to get passsed COVID-19 as a country until most of us are fully vaccinated, and I was really keep to do my bit,” she said.

She also got AstraZeneca after figuring she was far more likely to be partially or even fully vaccinated with that option than if she waited for Pfizer.

and we don’t have a lot of clarity around when young people will get Pfizer, and I just wanted it as soon as possible,” she said.

In Victoria, 29,205 people under 40 are fully vaccinated with Astra and 17,705 have had one dose since the start of the rollout in March.

NSW reported 22,678 fully vaccinated people in that age group and 22,348 who have had one dose at July 19, while 26,625 young people in Queensland had been fully vaccinated and 9585 had had one dose.

At the same time health experts and politicians, spanning from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley and NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant, have called on young people to talk to their GPs about getting Astra in light of the wave of lockdowns and COVID-19 outbreaks gripping the country.

Duke Cole, a 28-year-old Sydneysider who, like Ms Norman and Ms Sherwood-Meares, works in an office so is not in a priority vaccine group, saw getting AstraZeneca as a step towards leaving lockdowns behind.

“So as soon as they said we could get AstraZeneca, [myself] and a lot of my colleagues who are younger started getting it.”.

All four young professionals said they understood people’s hesitancy about the vaccination considering the negative coverage of the AstraZeneca blood clot risk in the news.