Live Webinar: Variants, Vaccines and Lockdown – An Expert Opinion

As Sydney endures another lockdown, a new COVID-19 variant and a fluctuation in daily cases, there continues to be a barrage of information from multiple sources around the pandemic.

WSBC is delighted to be joined by two internationally renowned experts from The Westmead Institute for Medical Research (WIMR) who will help us better understand the virus, vaccines and the medium to long term outlook for you, your family and and your business.

During this free webinar, we will ask our experts a range of questions including:

• What are the specific characteristics of the Delta variant we are seeing in Sydney’s outbreak and how are the vaccines holding up against these strains?
• How can herd immunity be achieved?
• Can you mandate COVID-testing for your employees?
• What is long COVID? And what are the potential impacts for business?
• What does living with COVID-19 look like?
• What else can we be doing to manage COVID-19 better in both our personal lives and in the workplace?

You will also have the opportunity to ask live questions during this webinar.

Webinar Presenter  l  Professor Tony Cunningham  

Professor Tony Cunningham is an infectious diseases physician, clinical virologist and scientist and is internationally renowned for his research related to HIV and herpes viruses. He is an antivirals expert. Professor Cunningham and his team pioneered the Shingrex vaccine in a quest to prevent shingles in ageing populations. The vaccine is currently being manufactured by GSK and will be available in June. Professor Cunningham is the Co-Director of the Centre for Virus Research at WIMR, Director of the Australian Centre for HIV and Hepatitis Virology Research, and serves on numerous international expert panels on HIV, antivirals and vaccines. Tony originally founded WIMR, and in 2010 he was awarded Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “service to medicine, particularly in the field of viral research and through the development and leadership of medical and biomedical research”.

Webinar Presenter  l  Professor Sarah Palmer

Professor Sarah Palmer is the Co-Director of the Centre for Virus Research at WIMR and a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney School of Medicine. She is a world-renowned HIV researcher who received her PhD at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, focusing on medical virology. Professor Palmer conducted her post-doctoral studies at Stanford University, Centre for AIDS Research. For 8 years Professor Palmer directed the core virology laboratory for the HIV Drug Resistance Program at the National Institutes of Health in the USA. Her expertise in identifying parts of HIV proteins likely to stimulate human white cell responses has now been applied to WMRI's COVID-19 project.