Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs About 1200 families were affected and advised that their vaccines may have been ineffective against serious diseases, including measles, whooping cough and pneumonia.Freya and her family immediately took the newborn to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown, where he was monitored for four hours. He has not developed any adverse events.Selim sent Freya a copy of a National Adverse Events Following Immunisation report, to be submitted to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), for the incident, and notified Camperdown Public Health Unit of the error.Selim did not respond to questions from the Herald about the vaccination error and cold chain breach.The TGA has received 138 reports of vaccination errors nationwide this year, 65 of which involved children under five years old. There were 1120 error reports in 2024, and 1253 in 2023.“Many reports of vaccination error are reported to the TGA without any adverse event associated with the error at the time of reporting,” a TGA spokesperson said.LoadingProfessor Peter Richmond, an infectious diseases researcher, paediatric immunologist and head of Kids Research Institute Australia’s vaccine trials group, said he would not be worried about the safety of the vaccine given to the newborn, noting Abrysvo had been trialled in two- to five-year-olds.“I don’t think it will affect the child in terms of causing problems,” said Richmond, who has worked on RSV for many years.But the baby may not be protected from RSV as well as he would have been had his mother received Abrysvo during pregnancy, or he had received nirsevimab, Richmond said.“I would be offering the child nirsevimab … the [two immunisations] don’t react [with one another] at all,” he said.Cases of RSV are on the rise in NSW, with 1126 confirmed cases in the week ending March 8, including 615 in children under five and 6855 cases so far this year. The highest rates were in children aged under one.Emergency Department presentations and admissions for bronchiolitis (a chest infection affecting the small airways in the lungs, which is mainly caused by RSV) have been increasing over the past month.On Tuesday, the NSW government announced nirsevimab would be free to all infants whose mothers did not receive Abrysvo during pregnancy. A similar program in Western Australia was found to prevent 600 infant hospitalisations in 2024.A Sydney Local Health District spokesperson said they had offered support to Freya’s child and family.After the cold chain breach was discovered in October, the Public Health Unit provided extensive education and support about vaccine storage to The Holy Family Medical Centre, the spokesperson said in a statement.The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.
