Karl Stefanovic has apologised for encouraging Aussies to get vaccinated during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying the media should not have been “involved in that kind of messaging”.

The Today show host issued the apology on Sunday during an interview with former Liberal Senator and vaccine critic Gerard Rennick on his YouTube podcast, The Karl Stefanovic Show.

During the height of the pandemic in 2021, Stefanovic had appeared alongside Nine stars Scott Cam, Eddie McGuire, Shaynna Blaze, Liz Hayes and Richard Wilkins, in the network’s vaccination campaign called “This is Our Shot”.

Stefanovic admitted he had “regrets from that time” after viewers commented on his role in advocating for the vaccine.

“Can we talk about Covid for a little bit? Because it’s often mentioned in the comments,” he said.

“Like I said, I read them all, because I’m genuinely interested in how people view things.

“The one thing they say about me is that I supported the Covid jab, and I have regrets from that time.

“I am definitely sorry for the role I played in not questioning the science, in not questioning more the government mandates, and I feel like I isolated people because of that, and I don’t think the media should be involved in that kind of messaging,” he continued.

“What I do believe is that we should have been there to offer some sort of education, but we shouldn’t have taken that step further and been part of a campaign.

“And I’m legitimately sorry for that, because I don’t know how that would have felt for people out there.”

Rennick, who was the senator for Queensland around that time, criticised Covid measures including lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

He replied to Stefanovic’s apology saying:  “first of all, you’re not a biochemist. You’re not going to know the difference between an mRNA vaccine and a traditional protein vaccine.”

“You had to rely on people like the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) to give you proper advice.

“There’s really two aspects to this. There was 2020 when Covid was out there in the community and we didn’t know what the impact of that was going to be,” he continued.

“I always thought the premiers played up the risk. Having said that, the risk was real … definitely towards older people. The big mistake they made was they locked down healthy people of working-age population. You don’t protect the weak by destroying the strong.”

“It’s so important during a crisis like that to get messaging right,” Stefanovic said.

Rennick took aim at former Health Minister Greg Hunt for not reacting quickly enough to reports of people getting injured by the vaccine.

“He (Hunt) should have picked that phone up to the TGA when I told him what was going on and said, ‘I’ve got a backbench Senator here who is getting inundated with young people being injured by that vaccine. What’s going on?’”

“And he never did it. He dismissed my concerns. And if you’re listening to this, Greg, I’m never going to forgive you for it.”

Stefanovic then repeated his regret in pushing the vaccine mandates, saying it was “inherently wrong” and that he should have asked “more questions” around the vaccine.

“We knew that it hadn’t been tested in the way that others had. Some of the vaccines have had 20 years of test studies. So I think more questions from the media about that and on the science of it is very important,” he said.

“But I don’t know what we would do differently next time because as you know the fear catches before the virus sometimes and the fear is even harder to deal with.”

While the Australian government now only recommends the vaccine for those aged over 65 and those who are severely immunocompromised, the Australian Technical Group on Immunisation states that it remains important to protect those at risk of severe disease from the virus.

“For those individuals recommended to receive Covid-19 vaccination, the risks of severe disease from Covid-19 are highest and the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks for the defined population.”

The TGA stresses that Covid vaccines are largely safe but, like all medicines, “may cause some side effects” in rare cases.

Image: YouTube