"I think the most important thing for us to focus on is the impact of the virus, the Coronavirus and the relative risks of the vaccines. The vaccines have been brought through in a very compressed timeframe, which is shorter than many of the other vaccines because of the nature of the pandemic," he said.

"I guess that's why we have seen some side effects come out during the vaccination programmes that that maybe if we'd had more time, you know, we would have been able to find those out a little bit earlier.

"But I think the tricky thing is, is when we hear about an adverse event, we zone in on that as part of our, our psychology, there's a whole field of psychology called heuristics that deals with this.

"So we hear about the risk of clots and it doesn't really matter what the number behind that risk is. We've focused on that."

Dr Stiles said that it was important to try and assist people to realise that the risk from whichever vaccine we get, has side effects much lower than the risks of even dying from Coronavirus.

"That's the first most important thing. The second important thing is that it's really important for older people to get vaccinated, because the health risks go up, particularly once you get over 60," he said.

"So, again, it doesn't really matter what vaccine you're getting. At the moment, they're recommending AstraZeneca for people over 60.

"I think it's very clear, we should just get as many people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine as possible. That's the current recommendation."

Dr Stiles said that for those under 60 the recommendations have been a bit more "confusing" as the advice continually changes.

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"That's a real challenge for us doctors to keep up with. But it's I guess even more to some degree confusing for people, but I would just offer people that the information has changed, because the data that the health professionals are getting is shifting and is evolving," he said.

"I think it does also show that the experts do have people's welfare at heart and even though they can see that those shifts are causing some challenges. I think their intention in doing those shifts is to give people the best possible vaccination outcome."

For the under 60s the Pfizer vaccine is preferred.

"But there's been a recent recommendation that if people are having trouble getting the Pfizer vaccine, if they do want to consider getting the AstraZeneca vaccine, then that remains an option because the safety profile of it is still very good," he said.

According to Mr Stiles the risk of getting clots with the first shot is about one in 60,000 cases and the risk of getting clots after your second shot is about one in 600,000.

"So many practices because of the shifting advice, are suggesting for people under 60, if they do want to get an AstraZeneca shot to discuss that with their doctor," he said.

"And the second is if people are not sure about getting vaccinated, I think it's just really important for people to think about what the consequences are of our population not getting vaccinated, which is a far bigger problem then the risk of whichever vaccine you take getting vaccinated."

Dr Stiles said that he thinks Australian's have held together really well through this pandemic.

"We have been one of the strongest performing countries and the primary issue with a viral pandemic is that the treatment is with the people. It's how people behave," he said.

"That is, that's the primary determinants to how we track through it, certainly before we get vaccinated, and so Australians have held together really well with that.

"And I think with this new recent outbreak, I think we're we're kind of each getting familiar and now in a way our own experts with how to manage ourselves during these periods."

Dr Stiles said he just wanted to offer people his commendation for how Lithgow has had that community spirit.

"I don't think we have to approach it with a sense of fear, we're a year into it. We know how these public health measures work now if we all collectively do them, we can get on top of these outbreaks," he said.

"And so we've just got to get back in that mindset and get on with that, you know, those social social precautions that we now are all fairly familiar with."

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