COVID Vaccine !

[Yellow Fang]

Apparently the Canadians have been assured their Pfizer vaccines won't be blocked for export by the EU. They chose the European Pfizer plant in preference to those in the US because they had good reason to fear Trump would ban exports. So is it just the UK's Pfizer orders they are considering commandeering? I read somewhere a Pfizer vaccine ingredient is made in the UK.

Novamax are at the end of 3rd stage trials. Now they have to be approved and go into production in Stockton on Tees. So the Novamax vaccine should be available in a matter of months. Days would be better.

 

[Ajax Bay]

I have just placed a comment on deaths, lifting lock down, and the effect of vaccinations on summer 2021 but am putting the vaccines bit here as well.

Vaccination of the first tranche by 15 Feb (Groups 1-4 - say 12M - takes into account 20% refusals (variety of reasons)) will mean that, by 26 Feb (15 Feb + 11 days) 88% of people who unvaccinated would catch COVID-19, then develop serious illness (some then dying), will NOT (even) develop serious illness. Win! (for those vaccinated, and for the NHS both in terms of numbers of patients and staff illness and self-isolation absence, and probably for all those (1.2M, say) that the 12M don't transmit the infection to - but we haven't got evidence for that vaccine effect.)
Provided vaccine supplies remain sufficient (to allow 2.5M doses delivered per week), we should have vaccinated all the Groups (1-9 - #27M (NB 33M less 20%)) laid out by JCVI by mid Apr (all over 50s and and - see JCVI list). NB takes into account that second doses will take about half the delivery from 14 Mar onwards.
The adult (over 16) population of UK is 67M - ONS, (54M adults). At that vaccination rate (2.5M per week, half is second dose) we might hope to reach herd immunity at 80% (of adult population so 43M, opinions vary on the percentage required which depends on several factors) by early July. (NB I am not counting in any of the unvaccinated million + who've had COVID-19 and retained sufficient antibodies to get to 80%.) The summer months will also help (the average number of excess deaths mid-Jun to mid-Sep 2020 was very low). And in July and August the remainder (10M) of the adult population (O/16) and vulnerable under 16s (clinical judgement at this stage) can be vaccinated. If the decision is taken to vaccinate under 16s, this might neatly be achieved by doing so on in the first week of term.
Summer holiday in UK everyone? Let's hope for good weather and tailwinds.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

European Medicines Agency approves the Oxford/AZ jab

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-recommends-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca-authorisation-eu

Note: for all ages including >65 years.

 

[dutchguylivingintheuk]

And the EU also introduced ''export controls'' on vaccines. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55860540 very silly move, since the eu's slow response is the culprit not something else.

 

[IaninSheffield]

With the excellent news re Novavax, not least because

Novavax’s candidate differs from those currently being used in the UK, combining an engineered protein from the virus that causes COVID-19 with a plant-based ingredient to help generate a stronger immune response. Having a diverse portfolio of vaccines ...

and assuming the vaccine passes scrutiny by the MHRA, it would appear that the UK has access to in excess of 200 million doses across those which have been approved ... and there may of course be further success from other candidates 🤞

So what would be the best use of that surplus?

Source - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/novavax-publishes-positive-efficacy-data-for-its-covid-19-vaccine

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Yesterday (28th) was a good one on the vaccination front:

414 419 first dose and 1956 second dose on the day

7 891 184 first dose total

478 254 second dose total

Good effort!

 

[vickster]

With the excellent news re Novavax, not least because

and assuming the vaccine passes scrutiny by the MHRA, it would appear that the UK has access to in excess of 200 million doses across those which have been approved ... and there may of course be further success from other candidates 🤞

So what would be the best use of that surplus?

Source - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/novavax-publishes-positive-efficacy-data-for-its-covid-19-vaccine

Donate to hard hit countries within the developing world

 

[srw]

Meanwhile article in the guardian says lots on non priority groups being vaccinated and also GPs have lots of vaccine they are not allowed to use.

From the NHS website:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statisti...ly-announced-vaccinations-28-January-2021.pdf
"In the week ending the 24th January an additional 2,234,312 people were reported to have received an NHS vaccination for COVID-19 in England. This took the total number of people vaccinated since vaccinations began on 8th of December to 5,792,159 and the total vaccinations given to 6,232,584.

• Priority groups for vaccination in this initial phase were determined by Government following advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and included care home residents and their carers, people aged 80 years old and over, and frontline health and social care workers.

• Of the vaccinations provided over this time, 2,590,390 were provided to people aged 80 years old or over, which is 42% of the total vaccinations given."

The government haven't got around to breaking down the data by the other priority groups (which you'd have thought would be a basic bit of data), but actually 2.5m doses to people aged 80 and over is most of them - the total is somewhere in the region of 3m. Most of the doses at the moment are first doses.

 

[mjr]

Say a company signs contracts with two customers that are mutually incompatible in terms of delivery, what happens? This must happen all the time. The UK insisted on a legally binding clause with AstraZenica that Britain be served first. I am not a lawyer, but I would have thought the contract signed first had priority.

I am not a lawyer either, but I don't think "signed first" matters unless the second customer wishes to accuse the seller of acting in bad faith, of selling something that they knew they would not have by the delivery date.

I think ideally, the seller would try to renegotiate one or both of the contracts as soon as they realise there's a delivery problem. They would probably offer better terms to the most profitable contract or customer (and those are not always the same thing in the long term) if they can, but if they can't renegotiate anything, then they would have to terminate whichever contract has the cheapest termination payments stated in it, rather than land in court over it... and if that customer wanted to try to take them to court over it, I hope the courts would take a dim view over them rejecting the agreed termination payment. If there is no termination clause in one or both contracts, then it's a cluster fark mixed with a shoot show and the negotiators should be chewed out, or at least nibbled a bit.

To all who are saying that it is the EU's fault, I would suggest that it is very likely that the EU factories were listed as production capacity for the UK order, in a mirror-image of the EU contract. Of course we don't know that unless the UK-AZ contract is published too, but I suspect we are basically in @Yellow Fang's example, but with the glare of publicity and politics involved.

One complication is that having sold production from the UK factories to someone else does not appear to be a permitted reason for AZ to terminate their EU contract - and even if they had somehow contrived to fail to obtain EMA authorisation today, section 12 seems to they cannot legally sell the vaccines from the UK and EU factories to anyone else in that case (edit to add: but there is a large redacted part).

 

[srw]

Yesterday (28th) was a good one on the vaccination front:

414 419 first dose and 1956 second dose on the day

7 891 184 first dose total

478 254 second dose total

Good effort!

Your glasses are curiously rose-tinted. Here is the government's own chart of recent weeks.

Bear in mind that the number of vaccine centres has consistently grown through this period, which should really have resulted in more jabs. This last week we actually gave out fewer doses than the previous week, and not many more than the week before that.

I've said it before - this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. One day's success is irrelevant if the month isn't very good. Success in vaccinating the UK population is meaningless for as long as there are other countries which are less protected than we are. It's a global pandemic. The whole world needs protection for humanity to be safe.

 

[lane]

Your glasses are curiously rose-tinted. Here is the government's own chart of recent weeks.
View attachment 571123
Bear in mind that the number of vaccine centres has consistently grown through this period, which should really have resulted in more jabs. This last week we actually gave out fewer doses than the previous week, and not many more than the week before that.

I've said it before - this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. One day's success is irrelevant if the month isn't very good. Success in vaccinating the UK population is meaningless for as long as there are other countries which are less protected than we are. It's a global pandemic. The whole world needs protection for humanity to be safe.

Ludicrous to say it's meaningless if it saves thousands of lives and gets us a bit more back to normal. Agreed for complete protection the who world needs doing. It's good for people in this country we are among the first.

Edit - shame the EU are trying to gatecrash our party

 

[Yellow Fang]

I read that the EU are preparing to invoke Article 122 against AstraZenica, which would allow them to take control of their business and raid their intellectual property with a view to reproducing their vaccines by other manufacturers. What is the point? By the time they do that AZ would probably have sorted out their yield issues. The same article says the EU spent 1/7th as much per capita on their vaccines as the UK.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Your glasses are curiously rose-tinted. Here is the government's own chart of recent weeks.
View attachment 571123
Bear in mind that the number of vaccine centres has consistently grown through this period, which should really have resulted in more jabs. This last week we actually gave out fewer doses than the previous week, and not many more than the week before that.

I've said it before - this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. One day's success is irrelevant if the month isn't very good. Success in vaccinating the UK population is meaningless for as long as there are other countries which are less protected than we are. It's a global pandemic. The whole world needs protection for humanity to be safe.

So do you suggest we vaccinate the rest of the world before our own vulnerable population?

 

[Unkraut]

Needless to say, in yesterday's press round-up on the radio there was a lot of criticism of the delay in getting vaccination going, and the government's and the EU's role in this. In particular, the EU worrying about costs.

Today it has changed somewhat. It is true that the UK ordered AZ first. The EU also later ordered with a contract for 80 million doses. This was suddenly reduced a few days ago to 31 million doses, and don't forget Pfizer last week announced a temporary cut back in the amount it had agreed to provide at 24 hours notice. This has hardly helped accelerate vaccination, worse with the British mutation threatening.

The EU's complaint it seems to me is that the supplies to the continent have been drastically reduced, whilst maintaining those to the UK. The fact the UK ordered first isn't relevant to this. Nor is where the product is produced. It seems reasonable that reductions in the supply should be spread equally to all customers with a contract with AZ.

Brexit isn't relevant to this issue. I found Gove, quoted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, as wanting to help European friends and partners patronising.

Some of the delay in EU approval was caused by dealing with the concerns of all 27 members. Some of them don't have unlimited money to throw at the problem, and 'rich first' needs to be avoided. An emergency licence might have damaged take up rates.

An Italian journalist last night was saying that increasing European solidarity on dealing with the vaccine, Germany taking Italian patients, the financial package to aid economic recover, has been well received by the Italian people and has taken the wind out of the sails of Italian populists. It's shut them up for a while, which is a nice thought!

 

[srw]

So do you suggest we vaccinate the rest of the world before our own vulnerable population?

Straw man alert!

I am saying that whatever we do to vaccinate our own vulnerable population (and it's really good that we're doing well) is meaningless for long-term protection while there are still unvaccinated vulnerable out there in whom the virus can mutate.