This webinar looked at how to safeguard employees health and wellbeing in the aftermath of COVID-19, with insights into the key issues facing employers and the community, including:

• Global and domestic update on vaccine development and rollout plans
• an explanation of how the various vaccine alternatives work and their relative safety and efficacy
• analysis of realistic timelines and considerations for what needs to happen for a return to “normal”, and for domestic and international borders to open.

The discussion also looked at the range of key medical developments emerging from the pandemic and how these might impact life beyond COVID-19.

WIMR is one of Australia’s leading medical research institutes, and they have played a pivotal role in the response to COVID-19, working across the entire spectrum of public health, from diagnosing, testing and tracing the virus, to managing patient care, through to vaccine development.

Our Panel:

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, 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 also 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 this COVID-19 project.

Professor Tony Cunningham is arguably Australia’s most experienced and preeminent medical researcher focused on vaccine development in the ageing. He is an infectious diseases physician, clinical virologist and scientist, internationally renowned for his research on the immunobiology of HIV and herpes viruses, his work on vaccine and microbicide development, and as an antivirals expert. 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/HSV, 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”.

Ivan Power is a director of The Westmead Institute for Medical Research Foundation, and chair of the WIMR Foundation. Ivan has extensive experience in financial markets and investment management, and spent over twenty years at Macquarie Group in a variety of senior roles in Sydney and London, currently leading Portfolio & Performance for Macquarie Group.