olle wrote:

Arion640 wrote:

olle wrote:

I think that is correct. That in Swiss that not part of EU ban AZ totally without a vaccine on its own cannot be connected to any EU UK bashing.

Probably the consideration is that there is a number of below 65 or in some cases below 55 that anyway need a vaccine early meaning that the first batches anyway will be used.

EU seems to get much bigger deliverance of the other vaccines so probably the +70 anyway is covered.

This is handling risk against gain.

Also many experts are not happy with extending the time between the first and second shot. I am in no position to understand enough to have any oppinion about this, but in most northern EU and Norway except Finland vaccines are saved for the second shot meaning that soon the weak people will actually be fully vaccinated. Italy today seems to be the country with highest part of fully vaccinated people in EU also more then UK.

Fully vaccinated won’t matter, lives saved will. The science proves the Az Vaccine is okay for a few weeks without the second shot.

I totally agree. My point is that I read different opinions from different experts in different countries.

Some countries like UK says it totally fine let us go for it. UK seems to have a higher apetite for risk while accepting emergency approval for different vaccines.

In the opposite corner we have Swiss that will not accept AZ vaccine at all. Neither UK nor Swiss is EU members so EU politics should not be involved.

EU EMA has actually accepted AZ vaccine for all ages. But now Sweden, Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Germany counting as EU members and Norway non EU member but I believe EMA member has put 55 or 65 age as limit.

I do not have anything close to a knowledge level in this matter to say if it is UK, Swiss, EU or different EMA members has a correct opinion.

What do you base your opinion on Arion640?

One aspect that is completely overlooked so far is that the appetite for risk as you could call it, may actually be case-driven.

Given the lack of verified data on the exact response to the AZ vaccine in elderly people, it is undeniably true that there was/is a certain degree of 'live testing' going on in the UK when the decision was first taken to administer it to elderly people too. This decision is perfectly understandable from a British perspective of course, given there is no other alternative available at this point any longer! The NHS got completely inundated with covid patients and people were left dying in ambulances on the parking lot of hospitals while waiting for a place in the emergency care units even, at least if one is to believe the news reports shown overhere. In such a case, you don't care about the individual nor the long term risks of any sort of vaccine, you just use everything you have at your disposal, right away

However, other countries have found themselves lucky not to be in such outright emergency healthcare situation and seem to be able to control the inflow of Covid cases better, so they are in a position to still prioritize their decisions relating to vaccine approval, putting absolute certainty before the need for maximum speed.
This has nothing to do with the EU 'failing to speed up or to botch the rollout 'as some outlets would like to have us believe: Japan or Korea haven't started their vaccination campaigns at all, while Norway which is not an EU member, or Switzerland have both taken a far more cautious approach to the AZ vaccine too, with Switzerland even having decided to refuse the use of the AZ vaccine competely for the time being! What political points would they want to make by such a decision, either domestically or to the UK, in the eyes of all those seeing political motives in the identical decision by serveral EU countries to partially refuse the use of the AZ vaccine?

My reading is that when you have the luxury of time, the prefered global approach almost always seems this: 'better safe than sorry'.
Especially knowing there is a fairly important group of people who are wary of the speed at which all these vaccines came about, I think this is a wise thing to do.
I doubt many people will ultimaterly refuse to be vaccinated, but it seems likely that most won't mind seeing others go first to see the long term effect.
When you don't feel the urgency so much as the UK is doing, you're more enclined to agree with a policy that matches this feeling, which is why the general feeling in the UK is very much pro their 'can do' approach, while at the same time the general feeling in rest of the world is more in favour of a cautious and more gradual roll out, which I'd label 'won't try'.

When Britain was in the EU the North as well as the South had a blocking minority. As a British I would have voted for Brexit to get rid of bankers. As a German I consider Brexit a medium catastrophe. I'm not keen to get policy dictated from the South and want the British back.

I'm quite frustrated how this discussion developed. A.net discussions are usually high standard for social media. But one could see how rapid groups form. In case of conflict pretty much everybody takes the position of the own group.
Maybe the British can unite again over the topic, just like continental Europe. To unite one always requires an enemy.

It also reminds me of China. Smart Deng said to develop and lie low. The world admired China for its advances and wished it well. That worked as long as the leadership accepted that leadership has to be passed after certain years. But the new leader wants lifelong power. So he had to start unnecessary drama in the South China Sea to rouse nationalist feeling. Social media comments from China show how his strategy succeeds.

I don't know if the vaccine drama is Ursula's or Boris Johnson's fault. But if it is Boris's fault he may still profit from nationalist sentiment. Humans are just not meant to live in peace with each other.

Since the British have the most trouble with the mutated virus I think they should get preference until their high risk groups are vaccinated. If Germany doesn't want to give the vaccine to the old they should vaccine the medical and old age home personnel and leave the rest of the AZ vaccine to Britain.

By the way: Both my parents are above 80 and I desire them to get the vaccine, AZ or otherwise, rather yesterday than tomorrow.
My mother already said she doesn't even want the AZ vaccine. I disagree.

Dano1977 wrote:

My parents who are in their early 70's received there vaccination papers today, two minutes on the Govt website and they are booked in for there jabs tomorrow morning 2 miles from there house.

The Conservative Govt may have got a lot wrong during this pandemic which hopefully will be investigated by a public inquiry at a later date, but the Govt and NHS have got the vaccination roll out absolutely spot on.

From early purchase rights of the then still in development vaccines in great numbers to using the army for logistical support in the rollout, with at one point over 600,000 vaccinated in one day.

I believe this success will be used as a scapegoat for the previous errors made by BoJo and Co.

Still the number of death per day compared to population is still extremely high in UK even if it seems to go down a bit.

The death rate per capita in UK is still more then double compared to EU as a whole.

Perhaps situation in NHS close to fall apart under the weight of Covid also right or wrong made the UK government accepting more risk?

https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?ar ... ues=deaths

Dano1977 wrote:

but the Govt and NHS have got the vaccination roll out absolutely spot on..

That is definitely true. Here it took until vaccinations were actually about to start for the government to notice that register data can not be use to invite people to get their shot.... its not like they had almost a year to figure that out and pass and addendum to privacy laws "unless in this case" or something...

best regards
Thomas

tommy1808 wrote:

Dano1977 wrote:

but the Govt and NHS have got the vaccination roll out absolutely spot on..

That is definitely true. Here it took until vaccinations were actually about to start for the government to notice that register data can not be use to invite people to get their shot.... its not like they had almost a year to figure that out and pass and addendum to privacy laws "unless in this case" or something...

You are right of course in that the legal constraints could have been lifted sooner in order to make things as smooth as possible, but it's a bit easy to put the full burden of a successful vaccination campaign on the shoulders of any national or local government or health care administration.
As we've read here from Dano1977, and it does seem to confirm a feeling I have when I look around a bit, is that the desire to get inoculated ASAP is extremely high in the UK, with people littlerally signing up to get their first jab and driving for miles to get it. Totally understandably, given the complete implosion of the NHS in its hospitals: that must have scared the hell ouf ot millions of people.
At other places however, where the medical emergency is far less critical and has never been near what it is/was in the UK, this desire to go up front may be far less or even completely non-existant.
Yesterday for instance it emerged that in my country, almost 40% of staff in Frenchspeeking hospitals does not want to be vaccinated!
And last week, there was a Covid test centrum in Antwerp, which called upon a whole district to come in to be tested to contain a local outbreak of what is called the 'British variant' (in the UK refered to as the Kent variant) and merely 25% of the people showed up.
If you clearly have a completely different public perception of the same problem, it's not so weird to see politicians take very different decisions either.
Saying "they are failing their people" or "we're so much better because we are ahead with the first shot" (second shot shows a different picture btw) is wrong as it simply does not take into account both the local situation nor the general feeling about it.
As i've said: the UK government has no other option but to do what it currently does; other governments around the globe have, and honnestly I'm not so sure they're doing it wrong by taking a more cautious, phased approach really. I'm personally not so fond of being used as a guinea pig either, if I can somehow avoid it and I don't think I'm running a huge risk by possibly seeing any vaccination of mine delayed by a few weeks either, from where I live and what the situation is overhere: schools open, shops open, outdoor activities like zoo's etc reopening as from next week. We put a mask on, wash our hands, work from home whenever possible and don't go to pubs, that's it, and we have about 40 deads per day on a population of some 11 million in a densely populated country: not exactly justifying a war like vaccination campaign running 24/7 with shots of a vaccine which haven't been fully tested and certified even IMHO.

Sokes wrote:

When Britain was in the EU the North as well as the South had a blocking minority. As a British I would have voted for Brexit to get rid of bankers. As a German I consider Brexit a medium catastrophe. I'm not keen to get policy dictated from the South and want the British back.

I'm quite frustrated how this discussion developed. A.net discussions are usually high standard for social media. But one could see how rapid groups form. In case of conflict pretty much everybody takes the position of the own group.
Maybe the British can unite again over the topic, just like continental Europe. To unite one always requires an enemy.

It also reminds me of China. Smart Deng said to develop and lie low. The world admired China for its advances and wished it well. That worked as long as the leadership accepted that leadership has to be passed after certain years. But the new leader wants lifelong power. So he had to start unnecessary drama in the South China Sea to rouse nationalist feeling. Social media comments from China show how his strategy succeeds.

I don't know if the vaccine drama is Ursula's or Boris Johnson's fault. But if it is Boris's fault he may still profit from nationalist sentiment. Humans are just not meant to live in peace with each other.

Since the British have the most trouble with the mutated virus I think they should get preference until their high risk groups are vaccinated. If Germany doesn't want to give the vaccine to the old they should vaccine the medical and old age home personnel and leave the rest of the AZ vaccine to Britain.

By the way: Both my parents are above 80 and I desire them to get the vaccine, AZ or otherwise, rather yesterday than tomorrow.
My mother already said she doesn't even want the AZ vaccine. I disagree.

First I totally agree to everything you say.

This specific thread was created last week when thing went south between UK and EU. After 4 years of an impossible serial of Brexit threads getting more and more nationalistic until new years eve I feel that suddenly the "vaccination success" was made an example of Brexit success by No 10 spin doctors and EU commission took the bate special when the national governments started to ask questions after AZ could not deliver to EU but had full speed forward in UK.

I think Ms Merkel should step in and with her calmness explain the different strategies. There is a lot of difference in decisions between UK and EU and both EU and UK populations should do well to understand what is behind the different strategies.

I must say that pro Brexit news outlets in UK does not help the situation make this into some style of cold war UK EU.

I think what Germany do and send Nurses to Portugal is fantastic. We should all send vaccines to the different hot spots like Portugal and some eastern European countries like Czech republic to get things under control.

In Sweden things are bad but we have resources left to cope a few more weeks and numbers both death and infected go down thanks lord.

My 85 years old parents will be in the next group getting vaccine and as I understand they will be able to get it from end of next week.

sabenapilot wrote:

tommy1808 wrote:

Dano1977 wrote:

but the Govt and NHS have got the vaccination roll out absolutely spot on..

That is definitely true. Here it took until vaccinations were actually about to start for the government to notice that register data can not be use to invite people to get their shot.... its not like they had almost a year to figure that out and pass and addendum to privacy laws "unless in this case" or something...

You are right of course in that the legal constraints could have been lifted sooner in order to make things as smooth as possible, but it's a bit easy to put the full burden of a successful vaccination campaign on the shoulders of any national or local government or health care administration.
As we've read here from Dano1977, and it does seem to confirm a feeling I have when I look around a bit, is that the desire to get inoculated ASAP is extremely high in the UK, with people littlerally signing up to get their first jab and driving for miles to get it. Totally understandably, given the complete implosion of the NHS in its hospitals: that must have scared the hell ouf ot millions of people.
At other places however, where the medical emergency is far less critical and has never been near what it is/was in the UK, this desire to go up front may be far less or even completely non-existant.
Yesterday for instance it emerged that in my country, almost 40% of staff in Frenchspeeking hospitals does not want to be vaccinated!
And last week, there was a Covid test centrum in Antwerp, which called upon a whole district to come in to be tested to contain a local outbreak of what is called the 'British variant' (in the UK refered to as the Kent variant) and merely 25% of the people showed up.
If you clearly have a completely different public perception of the same problem, it's not so weird to see politicians take very different decisions either.
Saying "they are failing their people" or "we're so much better because we are ahead with the first shot" (second shot shows a different picture btw) is wrong as it simply does not take into account both the local situation nor the general feeling about it.
As i've said: the UK government has no other option but to do what it currently does; other governments around the globe have, and honnestly I'm not so sure they're doing it wrong by taking a more cautious, phased approach really. I'm personally not so fond of being used as a guinea pig either, if I can somehow avoid it and I don't think I'm running a huge risk by possibly seeing any vaccination of mine delayed by a few weeks either, from where I live and what the situation is overhere: schools open, shops open, outdoor activities like zoo's etc reopening as from next week. We put a mask on, wash our hands, work from home whenever possible and don't go to pubs, that's it, and we have about 40 deads per day on a population of some 11 million in a densely populated country: not exactly justifying a war like vaccination campaign running 24/7 with shots of a vaccine which haven't been fully tested and certified even IMHO.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a massive Europhile and have lived and worked in the EU for the past 11 years and even took up EU citizenship as a result of Brexit, so I really have no bias against the EU at all. On the contrary, I'm probably too biased in favour of it !

I think your argument here is flawed and you are clutching at straws. To say that the NHS has collapsed is not entirely true. Sure, it was shocking to see ambulances lined up in London, but compared to other EU countries, the UK actually coped pretty well with hospitalisations. The NHS did not collapse, the extra field hospitals were not needed, and staffing levels have held up quite well. The NHS has coped remarkably well faced with shocking government indeptitude, negligence and disorganisation.

Let's not forget that Italy's healthcare system was significantly impacted by both the first and second waves, and its pleas were largely ignored by the EU.
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-clini ... a-55703503
France had to send patients by medivac to Germany:
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/malad ... 75141.html (just one occasion but many more instances)
Portugal has had to bring in staff and supplies from Germany:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55902317
Spain basically abandoned the elderly in care homes:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/ ... -pandemic/

I don't think it's fair or truthful to put the public's desire to get vaccinated onto the strain faced by the NHS. It is a combination of plentiful supplies, an efficient targeting of populations and a general lack of vaccine scepticism in the UK compared to other countries. (Notably France, where only 40% of the population would accept a vaccine: https://www.ft.com/content/1157896c-881 ... 9f2752aaac).

I'm afraid to say the Commission has let both themselves and Europe down (including myself, who will be vaccinated in Europe at some point). A bit more humility and less nationalism will be the key to getting us out of this pandemic.

olle wrote:

Dano1977 wrote:

My parents who are in their early 70's received there vaccination papers today, two minutes on the Govt website and they are booked in for there jabs tomorrow morning 2 miles from there house.

The Conservative Govt may have got a lot wrong during this pandemic which hopefully will be investigated by a public inquiry at a later date, but the Govt and NHS have got the vaccination roll out absolutely spot on.

From early purchase rights of the then still in development vaccines in great numbers to using the army for logistical support in the rollout, with at one point over 600,000 vaccinated in one day.

I believe this success will be used as a scapegoat for the previous errors made by BoJo and Co.

Still the number of death per day compared to population is still extremely high in UK even if it seems to go down a bit.

The death rate per capita in UK is still more then double compared to EU as a whole.

Perhaps situation in NHS close to fall apart under the weight of Covid also right or wrong made the UK government accepting more risk?

https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?ar ... ues=deaths

I agree the NHS was stretched, but close to collapse, is a little far.

The numerous Nightingale hospitals that were built and fully equipped were never used to their full capacity, and some have been put into a "ready" situation if the numbers become worse.

Some can criticise the NHS because it's socialised medicine and won't be as good as Insurance based healthcare, but the system works, yes at certain times it groans and creeks at the seams but the system works.
My dad's younger brother was diagnosed with Cancer. within 3 days he's was seen by a specialist and 2 days after that was undergoing chemotherapy. So 5 days from seeing his family doctor to undergoing treatment is pretty good.

DNDTUF wrote:

I think your argument here is flawed and you are clutching at straws. To say that the NHS has collapsed is not entirely true. Sure, it was shocking to see ambulances lined up in London, but compared to other EU countries, the UK actually coped pretty well with hospitalisations. The NHS did not collapse, the extra field hospitals were not needed, and staffing levels have held up quite well. The NHS has coped remarkably well faced with shocking government indeptitude, negligence and disorganisation.

Let me start by saying I have no intent to put any blame on NHS: they did all they could, and more so even: well done.
What I'm saying is that the recent healthcare situation in the UK is quite a bit worse than it is on the continent right now, which is in part because of the British government's mismanagement of the crisis so far as you say, in part also because of just bad luck (i.e. the far more contagious British variant being... well British).
But it does however make the case to get vaccinated a fair bit easier, especially in a population that is already lacking vaccine scepticism, contrary to many other countries.

DNDTUF wrote:

I'm afraid to say the Commission has let both themselves and Europe down (including myself, who will be vaccinated in Europe at some point).

I honnestly don't see what the Commission could have done differently: vaccination campaigns are essentially a national competence.
All the Commission did was to propose to order vaccines for all memberstates combined so as to avoid a repeat of the endless fights from March last year on the protective masks or the vaccine nationalism which sadly has been demonstrated by 1 ex-memberstate which refuses to share its resources now, while it happily drew from production sites in the EU before...
All 27 members (as well as some EEA members) voluntarily subscribed to this group purchase by the EC (sometimes next to their own top up orders), but other than that, the distribution, administration and organisation of the vaccine in the different countries of Europe is entirely up to the national governments there, or in case of a federal country (like mine or Germany) even up to that of the federated states. There's no EU official in sight at our vaccine centres, it's all done by the regional government overhere.
Let it also be noted that when reference is made to the vaccination campaign in the EU, it is nothing but an easy substitude for the different vaccination campaigns by national governments within the territory of the EU, and so in the anglo-saxon press, the EU is incorrectly picking up quite some blame for something its not involved with, next to being judged from a British perspective where the speed of vaccination is the prime target now due to there being no other options left to the UK, which is happily not the case overhere, as I've said.
As others have pointed out, the fact the UK needs to speed up so much with the vaccination campaign is due to the fact it is facing a national health crisis completely unseen so I'd be very reluctant to use that as a sign of success.
Besides, it's also the British press which is constantly comparing the UK to the EU (or in fact the combinination of the 27 different other European Union member states' national vaccination roll outs in fact then): in comparison to that of Israel, there's suddenly nothing to write home about (some 60% inoculated, it seems?), or in comparison to Korea or Japan, the EU is suddenly doing great too by the same metric of just looking at the percentage of first inoculation (both have zero vaccinations so far). This whole idea to compare the reaction to different epidemiological situtions is utterly nonsensical and purely political driven IMHO. As you rightfully say: a bit more humility would be appropriate on this topic.

Dano1977 wrote:

olle wrote:

Dano1977 wrote:

My parents who are in their early 70's received there vaccination papers today, two minutes on the Govt website and they are booked in for there jabs tomorrow morning 2 miles from there house.

The Conservative Govt may have got a lot wrong during this pandemic which hopefully will be investigated by a public inquiry at a later date, but the Govt and NHS have got the vaccination roll out absolutely spot on.

From early purchase rights of the then still in development vaccines in great numbers to using the army for logistical support in the rollout, with at one point over 600,000 vaccinated in one day.

I believe this success will be used as a scapegoat for the previous errors made by BoJo and Co.

Still the number of death per day compared to population is still extremely high in UK even if it seems to go down a bit.

The death rate per capita in UK is still more then double compared to EU as a whole.

Perhaps situation in NHS close to fall apart under the weight of Covid also right or wrong made the UK government accepting more risk?

https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?ar ... ues=deaths

I agree the NHS was stretched, but close to collapse, is a little far.

The numerous Nightingale hospitals that were built and fully equipped were never used to their full capacity, and some have been put into a "ready" situation if the numbers become worse.

Some can criticise the NHS because it's socialised medicine and won't be as good as Insurance based healthcare, but the system works, yes at certain times it groans and creeks at the seams but the system works.
My dad's younger brother was diagnosed with Cancer. within 3 days he's was seen by a specialist and 2 days after that was undergoing chemotherapy. So 5 days from seeing his family doctor to undergoing treatment is pretty good.

I as a swede used to consider high taxes and general public health care as a problem until I lived in USA and special in Chile.

In special Chile healthcare bills can destroy a middle-class family.

I prefer German, Scandinavian, NHS equal for all health care independent on your class, income etc before insurance based health care and pay my taxes happily.

I think we need to remember that EU is still very much 27 states. Until very recent EU has got nothing to do with saving nations having economically problems nor until a few month ago anything to do with health care or even crisis management in general.

Greece showed that EU must handle economical emergencies. I think that without Greece the current emergency budget would have been impossible. I even say that the emergency budget 2020 was partly thanks to Brexit. UK would never have allowed it, and Germany would never have allowed it 10 years ago. Thanks to this budget hopefully latin part of Europe will avoid a lost generation.

Regarding health care I feel that EU is where it was 2010 regarding financial crisis. I feel that 2030 EU will coordinate not only health care but also emergency handling between countries much better then today.

In brief we go slowly against a federal Europe one crisis each step.

The Dutch healthcare authorities have advised against using the AZ vaccine on people older than 65 years.
If the Dutch government follows this advice for their vaccination strategy, it adds another country to the growing list of nations which take this precautionary measure in the absence of scientifically confirmed data on the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine in this age group.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2367314-advies-z ... rigen.html

sabenapilot wrote:

The Dutch healthcare authorities have advised against using the AZ vaccine on people older than 65 years.
If the Dutch government follows this advice for their vaccination strategy, it adds another country to the growing list of nations which take this precautionary measure in the absence of scientifically confirmed data on the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine in this age group.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2367314-advies-z ... rigen.html

What is the scientific evidence that the AZ vaccine WILL/WOULD NOT be effective in that age group?

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

I am just curious.

Tugg

Tugger wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

The Dutch healthcare authorities have advised against using the AZ vaccine on people older than 65 years.
If the Dutch government follows this advice for their vaccination strategy, it adds another country to the growing list of nations which take this precautionary measure in the absence of scientifically confirmed data on the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine in this age group.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2367314-advies-z ... rigen.html

What is the scientific evidence that the AZ vaccine WILL/WOULD NOT be effective in that age group?

There is no evidence it doesn't work for 65 years and up, at least as far as I know. There just isn't any proper data that it does (yet). Since as you correctly point out this only shifts vaccines around prioritized groups nothing is really lost by the play it safe approach. Biontech/Moderna have sufficient data for older folks, so they get what has proven to work instead of expected to work.

Beat regards
Thomas

Tugger wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

The Dutch healthcare authorities have advised against using the AZ vaccine on people older than 65 years.
If the Dutch government follows this advice for their vaccination strategy, it adds another country to the growing list of nations which take this precautionary measure in the absence of scientifically confirmed data on the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine in this age group.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2367314-advies-z ... rigen.html

What is the scientific evidence that the AZ vaccine WILL/WOULD NOT be effective in that age group?

That's the whole problem: there's no meaningful clinical proof of it's effectiveness, apparently.
I'm no expert at this, but what was being said here by our health officials to justify them forbidding the use of this vaccine on elderly people (as from 55 years old in my country even) is that there were very few elderly people included in the clinical trials at a very late stage only and it happens that the test results for those vaccinated and those who received just a placebo is quasi identical within this limited test group, so no meaningful conclusion can be drawn about the effectiveness of this vaccine within this age group

As such the more cautious approach is not to give this vaccine to elderly people at all, a position which is now officially taken by
Belgium and Italy : for all 55+
Poland: 60+
Germany, France, Denmark Austria, Sweden and possibly also The Netherlands: 65+
Switzerland: outright ban (!)
USA: delayed approval for the same reason

Tugger wrote:

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

In the ideal world, this would be the case indeed.
The issue is of course that the availablity of other vaccines (i.e. the Pfizer one and the Moderna one which are the only other 2 currently approved in the EU) is not unlimited either and those were earmarket for other age groups so this decision comes with an impact on the vaccination schedule for all citizens, hence it is not taken lightly or just to make a poltical point at all. But since the UK government takes great pride in the "oxford vaccine" as it is called in the UK, any negative comment or restrictive decision as to its use is sadly perceived as a political action, especially when coming from an EU country...

An interesting link to follow the daily progress of the different national vaccination campaigns within the boundries of the EU and EEA is this:
https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/exten ... racker-tab
(currently just 3 EU coutries are still missing from the overview: Austria, Bulgaria and Estonia although they should be added soon too...)

sabenapilot wrote:

An interesting link to follow the daily progress of the different national vaccination campaigns within the boundries of the EU and EEA is this:
https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/exten ... racker-tab
(currently just 3 EU coutries are still missing from the overview: Austria, Bulgaria and Estonia although they should be added soon too...)

Sweden as example accelerates fast right now with next week will be as many vaccinations as January weeks combined.

As I understand increased deliverances will also creating a "ketchup" effect. Until now Swedish regions has "saved" the second shot and with fast increasing deliverance the % saved jabs will fast go down.

olle wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

An interesting link to follow the daily progress of the different national vaccination campaigns within the boundries of the EU and EEA is this:
https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/exten ... racker-tab
(currently just 3 EU coutries are still missing from the overview: Austria, Bulgaria and Estonia although they should be added soon too...)

Sweden as example accelerates fast right now with next week will be as many vaccinations as January weeks combined.

As I understand increased deliverances will also creating a "ketchup" effect. Until now Swedish regions has "saved" the second shot and with fast increasing deliverance the % saved jabs will fast go down.

Same here: Belgium has kept a whole lot of vaccines in reserve to make sure that all those who got their first shot so far will be fully inoculated on the right time by a follow up shot, even if no further deliveries of vaccines would follow. As the number of people having received their first shot grew fast, so did this reserve of course, but the likeliness of not receiving follow up deliveries for any of those first shots obviously reduces, so the reserve will now (in part) be released for use. that should start to give a catch up effect indeed and reduce the distorted view seen when you simply compare the number of first shots administered as has been done so far. There's definitely been a lot of spin put on the initial numbers by some countries to raise the national morale if you start to dig a bit deeper into it all. I hope that when the time comes, we'll also see full vaccination (i.e. 2 shots where needed) figures.

Tugger wrote:

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

I do think there is something lost: age is the biggest risk factor for severe covid. Not using az in the elderly effectively means postponing vaccination for them, as supply of other vaccines is limited. This costs lives.

Of course this assumes az is effective in 65+. Something which seems likely to me (as an informed layperson).

sabenapilot wrote:

Tugger wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

The Dutch healthcare authorities have advised against using the AZ vaccine on people older than 65 years.
If the Dutch government follows this advice for their vaccination strategy, it adds another country to the growing list of nations which take this precautionary measure in the absence of scientifically confirmed data on the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine in this age group.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2367314-advies-z ... rigen.html

What is the scientific evidence that the AZ vaccine WILL/WOULD NOT be effective in that age group?

That's the whole problem: there's no meaningful clinical proof of it's effectiveness, apparently.
I'm no expert at this, but what was being said here by our health officials to justify them forbidding the use of this vaccine on elderly people (as from 55 years old in my country even) is that there were very few elderly people included in the clinical trials at a very late stage only and it happens that the test results for those vaccinated and those who received just a placebo is quasi identical within this limited test group, so no meaningful conclusion can be drawn about the effectiveness of this vaccine within this age group

As such the more cautious approach is not to give this vaccine to elderly people at all, a position which is now officially taken by
Belgium and Italy : for all 55+
Poland: 60+
Germany, France, Denmark Austria, Sweden and possibly also The Netherlands: 65+
Switzerland: outright ban (!)
USA: delayed approval for the same reason

Tugger wrote:

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

In the ideal world, this would be the case indeed.
The issue is of course that the availablity of other vaccines (i.e. the Pfizer one and the Moderna one which are the only other 2 currently approved in the EU) is not unlimited either and those were earmarket for other age groups so this decision comes with an impact on the vaccination schedule for all citizens, hence it is not taken lightly or just to make a poltical point at all. But since the UK government takes great pride in the "oxford vaccine" as it is called in the UK, any negative comment or restrictive decision as to its use is sadly perceived as a political action, especially when coming from an EU country...

I’m sure the Oxford vaccine could be used on your health staff and care workers that are under 65?

I’m praying it works, the EMA, Indian and the UK regulator have approved it for all ages so what data are they working off the other countries don’t have?

Dupli wrote:

Tugger wrote:

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

I do think there is something lost: age is the biggest risk factor for severe covid. Not using az in the elderly effectively means postponing vaccination for them, as supply of other vaccines is limited. This costs lives.

if you accelerate vaccinating nursing home and other medical care stuff you still protect that vulnerable group. Its not like there is an overabundance of AZ vaccine that they need to push it onto healthy 20 year olds. Since more data comes in this limitation is likely temporary, unless the incoming data shows it isn´t effective. In either case no harm was done.

best regards
Thomas

sabenapilot wrote:

olle wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

An interesting link to follow the daily progress of the different national vaccination campaigns within the boundries of the EU and EEA is this:
https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/exten ... racker-tab
(currently just 3 EU coutries are still missing from the overview: Austria, Bulgaria and Estonia although they should be added soon too...)

Sweden as example accelerates fast right now with next week will be as many vaccinations as January weeks combined.

As I understand increased deliverances will also creating a "ketchup" effect. Until now Swedish regions has "saved" the second shot and with fast increasing deliverance the % saved jabs will fast go down.

Same here: Belgium has kept a whole lot of vaccines in reserve to make sure that all those who got their first shot so far will be fully inoculated on the right time by a follow up shot, even if no further deliveries of vaccines would follow. As the number of people having received their first shot grew fast, so did this reserve of course, but the likeliness of not receiving follow up deliveries for any of those first shots obviously reduces, so the reserve will now (in part) be released for use. that should start to give a catch up effect indeed and reduce the distorted view seen when you simply compare the number of first shots administered as has been done so far. There's definitely been a lot of spin put on the initial numbers by some countries to raise the national morale if you start to dig a bit deeper into it all. I hope that when the time comes, we'll also see full vaccination (i.e. 2 shots where needed) figures.

This what I mean by risk apetite. Even if Belgium is even worse hit then UK and well above EU average Belgium choose a more standard model for rol out of the vaccine.

EU seems to wait for UK to publish real result of AZ and then it can be used for older people as well depending on real results.

Tugger wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

The Dutch healthcare authorities have advised against using the AZ vaccine on people older than 65 years.
If the Dutch government follows this advice for their vaccination strategy, it adds another country to the growing list of nations which take this precautionary measure in the absence of scientifically confirmed data on the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine in this age group.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2367314-advies-z ... rigen.html

What is the scientific evidence that the AZ vaccine WILL/WOULD NOT be effective in that age group?

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

I am just curious.

Tugg

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

EU is in a different situation then UK and have more then one approved vaccine that the next few weeks will have big deliverance to EU. So I see that EU let the other candidates go to older people and the AZ go to health care personal and other people who has connection with weak groups.

Nothing lost.

When UK has real results observe EU countries not EMA can change opinion.

olle wrote:

Tugger wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

The Dutch healthcare authorities have advised against using the AZ vaccine on people older than 65 years.
If the Dutch government follows this advice for their vaccination strategy, it adds another country to the growing list of nations which take this precautionary measure in the absence of scientifically confirmed data on the effectiveness of the Oxford vaccine in this age group.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2367314-advies-z ... rigen.html

What is the scientific evidence that the AZ vaccine WILL/WOULD NOT be effective in that age group?

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

I am just curious.

Tugg

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

EU is in a different situation then UK and have more then one approved vaccine that the next few weeks will have big deliverance to EU. So I see that EU let the other candidates go to older people and the AZ go to health care personal and other people who has connection with weak groups.

Nothing lost.

When UK has real results observe EU countries not EMA can change opinion.

Why would the EMA approve it if they had doubts though? They are working off more info than us. I’d rather go with what they say.

Arion640 wrote:

olle wrote:

Tugger wrote:

What is the scientific evidence that the AZ vaccine WILL/WOULD NOT be effective in that age group?

And for the most part this should be a fungible problem, you just shift one vaccine to the one group and move another vaccine to back fill. So nothing lost really

I am just curious.

Tugg

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

EU is in a different situation then UK and have more then one approved vaccine that the next few weeks will have big deliverance to EU. So I see that EU let the other candidates go to older people and the AZ go to health care personal and other people who has connection with weak groups.

Nothing lost.

When UK has real results observe EU countries not EMA can change opinion.

Why would the EMA approve it if they had doubts though? They are working off more info than us. I’d rather go with what they say.

because for EMA 50% is fine.They don´t judge deployment strategies.

best regards
Thomas

tommy1808 wrote:

Arion640 wrote:

olle wrote:

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

EU is in a different situation then UK and have more then one approved vaccine that the next few weeks will have big deliverance to EU. So I see that EU let the other candidates go to older people and the AZ go to health care personal and other people who has connection with weak groups.

Nothing lost.

When UK has real results observe EU countries not EMA can change opinion.

Why would the EMA approve it if they had doubts though? They are working off more info than us. I’d rather go with what they say.

because for EMA 50% is fine.They don´t judge deployment strategies.

best regards
Thomas

What would be interesting is to understand the swiss decline to approve AZ totally.

That means that swiss cannot even use AZ for health care workers.

Arion640 wrote:

Why would the EMA approve it if they had doubts though? They are working off more info than us. I’d rather go with what they say.

The EMA basically evaluates 2 things: the safety and the efficiency of this vaccine.

The safety of the vaccine is no issue - nobody will get killed or seriously ill from being injected with it.

As to it's efficiency the clinical study AZ used in its application to the EMA shows good overall results, yet an analytical breakdown reveils very few elderly people participated in the trials and on top of that it happens to be so that the sample group of elderly people which was said to be fully protected showed no better results than the placebo grup which remained unprotected!
As such no conclusive answer could be given as to the efficiency of this vaccine for elderly people.

The EMA has reportedly hesitated to approve the vaccine on this basis, but ultimately decided against limiting the options for Europe's national health authorities and so gave its market authorisation after all. But the EMA does not specify how a vaccine should be used in the individual vaccination strategies of the different national governments and thus it has effectively shifted the responsability to its use over to the national health authorities.

Because of this and depending on the local necessity, it is now possible for individual countries to take the same 'risk' as the UK is taking by giving it to elderly people too, but it increasingly seems very few -if any- are actually going to do it. And for as long as it isn't needed, why should they? It causes a bit of a headache to shift around with the other vaccines as best and at worst it causes some more delays in the roll out, but other than that, what's the problem? In the UK this is perceived as a failure because it means a 'botched roll out', but I say it is just common sense precaution if you have the luxury to still do this. It avoids the risk that if we find out in say 3 months time that the A-Z shots given to elderly people do not offer a lasting protection after all, a new and even more deadly wave arrives as the virus rages in the care homes while we think they are all well protected in there...

A-Z is currenlty gathering additional data from their vaccination campaign in the UK, and will use that not only to lift the national bans in a whole range of European countries, but also to get market approval from the US FDA which is currently also withholding its approval of the Oxford vaccine for the same reason as most European countries do not revert to the possibility offered by the EMA to use the vaccine in full yet, so ther's no political aspect at all involved.

The only problem I see is that because the British government has identified so strongly with this vaccine from the start, it is now almost perceived as a national insult to see so many countries limit (most European countries) or even refuse (Switzerland or the USA) its use. No need to get so emotionally attached to a vaccine. It's developed in record speed and it is of great help, it just isn't perfect, but still... well done, i should say! Yet I knew it was going to become a political problem the moment I saw the British Health Secretary cry on TV over this, stating it was proof "Britain is a much better country than the others for having developed this vaccine". That's just not a healthy reaction at all and it means you take insult in things which aren't ment nor should be an insult when others start to evaluate this vaccine.

olle wrote:

tommy1808 wrote:

Arion640 wrote:

Why would the EMA approve it if they had doubts though? They are working off more info than us. I’d rather go with what they say.

because for EMA 50% is fine.They don´t judge deployment strategies.

best regards
Thomas

What would be interesting is to understand the swiss decline to approve AZ totally.

That means that swiss cannot even use AZ for health care workers.

I think they just stick to the normal protocol for approval of vaccines and don't feel the need to 'cut corners' also because there's no real need in the country for it?

It is being said here the EMA was actually quite lenient when they approved the vaccine, pobably to make it possible for any of of the 27 EU countries to use it in an emergecy situation and thus avoid the blame if things would get as bad overthere as in the UK with people complaining they couldn't use the same vaccine as the UK in a this crisis.
But I doubt that under normal conditions, it would have gained market approval so quickly and in full, although of course I'm not a specialist at it.
However, the decisions by the Swiss (as well as the US FDA) give some weight to this feeling...

olle wrote:

I as a swede used to consider high taxes and general public health care as a problem until I lived in USA and special in Chile.

In special Chile healthcare bills can destroy a middle-class family.

I prefer German, Scandinavian, NHS equal for all health care independent on your class, income etc before insurance based health care and pay my taxes happily.

If one has lived in very different countries, one can have an informed opinion.
There are so many things one takes for granted, like free quality education.

olle wrote:

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

This is a factually incorrect statement.

Tugg

In France the top priority people to get the vaccine were/are old people living in care homes. For the first week or two it was only them, now it's also healthcare professionals aged 50 and older, people living by themselves 75 and older, and old people with several grave comorbidities. I know an obese 66yo, for example, he can't get it yet.

Among care home people, and before the latest AZ controversy (as nobody was going to get vaccinated with it at the time), 60% declined to get vaccinated ! Keeping in mind either it their decision, or their younger relatives one...

With such defiance against vaccination, doing it like in the UK would have been an incredible gamble.

Tugger wrote:

olle wrote:

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

This is a factually incorrect statement.

Tugg

Authorities in several countries have taken this approach. You say there is evidence they're wrong, can you provide it ?

Tugger wrote:

olle wrote:

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

This is a factually incorrect statement.

In what way, if I may ask, is olle factually incorrect?

A-Z can currenly not show a clinical study that demonstrates beyond doubt that elderly people inoculated with their vaccine have a level op protection which goes beyond the statistical error when compared to an identical group of elderly people which got the placebo instead. That is precisely the whole issue why it's currently not approved by the Swiss at all, and why it's not used by most EU countries on elderly people.

Aesma wrote:

Tugger wrote:

olle wrote:

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

This is a factually incorrect statement.

Tugg

Authorities in several countries have taken this approach. You say there is evidence they're wrong, can you provide it ?

There is this:

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) acknowledged a low number of older people took part in AstraZeneca’s clinic trials. But the balance of evidence supported approval for all age groups over 18, it ruled.

“Protection is expected, given that an immune response is seen in this age group and based on experience with other vaccines. As there is reliable information on safety in this population, EMA’s scientific experts considered that the vaccine can be used in older adults. More information is expected from ongoing studies, which include a higher proportion of elderly participants,” it added.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ ... -1.4471272

And:

This doesn't mean that the AstraZeneca vaccine doesn't work well among the elderly, but rather that there is little data to prove it does.

"It is sad to see people misunderstanding the situation here," said Peter English, a consultant in communicable disease control.

"They are confusing an absence of evidence, with evidence of absence."

The EMA said there was insufficient data to know for certain how effective the AstraZeneca vaccine is in older individuals.

"However, protection is expected, given that an immune response is seen in this age group," it said.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/2 ... or-elderly

It concluded that the vaccine "can be used in older adults," as is already the case in Britain, which was the first country to authorise its use.

And there is this (yes, I realize.. "British" so obviously untrustworthy or whatever but take it as you will...)

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, The Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia, said:
[...]
2. However, we do know that antibody responses in older people is very little different to that in younger people and antibody levels seem to be a good predictor of protection
[...]

Dr Doug Brown, Chief Executive of the British Society for Immunology, said:
[...]
“The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) will have carefully scrutinised the evidence on this COVID-19 vaccine before making their recommendation. As noted in their original report, there is “limited information available on efficacy in participants aged 65 or over” for the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine in the phase 3 trial data published so far. This reflects a need for more data to be gathered and published on the effectiveness of the vaccine in this age group but there is no data so far to indicate that the vaccine isn’t effective in people over the age of 65. It should also be noted that in all published reports, the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine shows a good safety profile.

[...]
An AstraZeneca Spokesperson, said:

On Germany STIKO recommendation:
“The latest analyses of clinical trial data for the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine support efficacy in the over 65 years age group. We await a regulatory decision on the vaccine by the EMA in the coming days.”

And on the data:
“Reports that the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine efficacy is low in adults over 65 years is not an accurate reflection of the totality of the data. The latest analyses support efficacy in this age group, which we expect to be published by the EMA in the coming days. The most recent Lancet publication has demonstrated that older adults showed strong immune responses to the vaccine, with 100% of older adults generating spike-specific antibodies after the second dose.”


https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 40-6736(20)32466-1/fulltext

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expe ... under-65s/


You can also find information here:
http://www.pmlive.com/pharma_news/azs_c ... ws_1357347
https://theconversation.com/germany-may ... ork-154306
https://academic.oup.com/ageing/advance ... 74/6016483

There is more too if you wish.
I believe this quote from above most succinctly summarizes the situation: "They are confusing an absence of evidence, with evidence of absence."

Tugg

sabenapilot wrote:

Tugger wrote:

olle wrote:

The problem is that there still no evidence that it will.

This is a factually incorrect statement.

In what way, if I may ask, is olle factually incorrect?

There is "evidence" that it will work in older people as it is well known in science circles that the similarities between older and younger people are far greater than the differences. The differences tend to be around the body's ability to regenerate cells and to heal and to maintain mental acuity,. Also cancers and dementia etc. "test of time" diseases are also more prevalent. But the vast majority of the body's functions and mechanisms overall remain near identical. This is a fact.

You can turn a blind eye to the and intentionally ignore it but that does not change the facts of the human body and bodily functions. Are there risks? Of course. The question is "what does science, and the evidence of medicines overall show?" Factually, that the majority do function similarly in older and younger populations with some adjustment needed for known or existing risk factors in individuals and groups.

Tugg
Edited for spelling

Thank you, Tugger.

The end conclusion still is that none of the evidence presented by A-Z so far is meeting the highest possible standards on certainty generally expected by national health authorities before they start using the vaccine.

As I've explained before, the EMA hesitated very long to approve the AZ vaccine, but in the end decided to do so and let national health authorities decide for themselves because it does not want to be seen as preventing them from using also this option in an absolute health emergency as the UK is currently facing.

A 98% certainty is perfectly fine in the mids of such a national health crisis like the UK is facing; it is NOT acceptable in a situation where you have other alternatives to reduce the pressure on your health services and hospitals: then it just needs to be 100%, sorry.

sabenapilot wrote:

Thank you, Tugger.

The end conclusion still is that none of the evidence presented by A-Z so far is meeting the highest possible standards on certainty generally expected by national health authorities before they start using the vaccine.

As I've explained before, the EMA hesitated very long to approve the AZ vaccine, but in the end decided to do so and let national health authorities decide for themselves because it does not want to be seen as preventing them from using also this option in an absolute health emergency as the UK is currently facing.

A 98% certainty is perfectly fine in the mids of such a national health crisis like the UK is facing; it is NOT acceptable in a situation where you have other alternatives to reduce the pressure on your health services and hospitals: then it just needs to be 100%, sorry.

I will only offer that testing will never give you 100% proof for a larger population.

Tugg

Tugger wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

Thank you, Tugger.

The end conclusion still is that none of the evidence presented by A-Z so far is meeting the highest possible standards on certainty generally expected by national health authorities before they start using the vaccine.

As I've explained before, the EMA hesitated very long to approve the AZ vaccine, but in the end decided to do so and let national health authorities decide for themselves because it does not want to be seen as preventing them from using also this option in an absolute health emergency as the UK is currently facing.

A 98% certainty is perfectly fine in the mids of such a national health crisis like the UK is facing; it is NOT acceptable in a situation where you have other alternatives to reduce the pressure on your health services and hospitals: then it just needs to be 100%, sorry.

I will only offer that testing will never give you 100% proof for a larger population.

Tugg

Whatever the treshold, both the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines must have exceeded it, so it must be doable...
If the Oxford vaccine does what AZ claims and the initial positive responses seen in elderly people are of a persistent nature, I'm sure they'll have no problem in getting the initial limitions lifted. As said: national health authorities would love to get rid of them, but it needs to be risk free to do so.
If the A-Z vaccine is however less efficient on elderly people than the other ones, then it will prove to have been a very good decision not to have wasted perfectly usable doses on people who are still not sufficiently/persistently protected by them afterwards.
Really, there's no downside to being cautious in this, if you can somehow afford it.

sabenapilot wrote:

Whatever the treshold, both the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines must have exceeded it, so it must be doable...
If the Oxford vaccine does what AZ claims and the initial positive responses seen in elderly people are of a persistent nature, I'm sure they'll have no problem in getting the initial limitions lifted. As said: national health authorities would love to get rid of them, but it needs to be risk free to do so.
If the A-Z vaccine is however less efficient on elderly people than the other ones, then it will prove to have been a very good decision not to have wasted perfectly usable doses on people who are still not sufficiently/persistently protected by them afterwards.
Really, there's no downside to being cautious in this, if you can somehow afford it.

As I said this is (should be) a fungible problem. Caution is fine and intelligent review of facts before implementing anything is the right thing to do.

I am merely not willing to accept an absolute statement that "there is NO evidence". There is.

Tugg

Tugger wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

Whatever the treshold, both the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines must have exceeded it, so it must be doable...
If the Oxford vaccine does what AZ claims and the initial positive responses seen in elderly people are of a persistent nature, I'm sure they'll have no problem in getting the initial limitions lifted. As said: national health authorities would love to get rid of them, but it needs to be risk free to do so.
If the A-Z vaccine is however less efficient on elderly people than the other ones, then it will prove to have been a very good decision not to have wasted perfectly usable doses on people who are still not sufficiently/persistently protected by them afterwards.
Really, there's no downside to being cautious in this, if you can somehow afford it.

As I said this is (should be) a fungible problem. Caution is fine and intelligent review of facts before implementing anything is the right thing to do.

I am merely not willing to accept an absolute statement that "there is NO evidence". There is.

Tugg

I think the A-Z vaccine currently sits in 'the gray zone' so to say.
Which is why it has been rejected by so many health authorities, much to the disbelief of the UK which took great pride in having developped it.
But rather than feel insulted (which I honnestly don't think was on anybody's mind), it should be understood that others may have the luxury to consider 'gray zone' as not enough, right now.

The Dutch government just decided to follow the advice of their national health authorities and will use the doses of the A-Z vaccine they'll get delivered to them by the EU on people up to 65 years old only, they've just announced. So that's another one that takes the cautious line, then.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2367425-60-tot-6 ... rsten.html

At least in Sweden we will not get big batches of AZ the next 10 days anyway, and there is health care professionals to give it to. The other vaccines on the other hands comes now in big quantities so they will anyway handle 65+ anyway. AZ will after Health care personal go to 60-65 years old, probably pretty soon before the general population 18-60 get it next and by then it will be bigger batches of deliverance.

I feel that the authorities while other 2 produces right now seems to deliver faster then expected the Swedish government anyway see that the weakest that actually dies will all have their first mid next week, and after that they will get their second shot after 28 days so the first ones that got the shots late 2019 shall be finished by now.

In this link you can see that until week 3 342 300 doses was delivered, week 4 67 275 doses week 5 110 370 doses week 6 171 570 doses week 7 285 030 doses. Of those AZ only will deliver week 6 45 600 doses and week 7 52 800 doses, which consider that Stockholm region health care system employs around 50 000 persons it will be no problem.

With a population of 10 000 people, around 300 000 very weak.

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smi ... av-vaccin/

sabenapilot wrote:

Thank you, Tugger.

The end conclusion still is that none of the evidence presented by A-Z so far is meeting the highest possible standards on certainty generally expected by national health authorities before they start using the vaccine.

As I've explained before, the EMA hesitated very long to approve the AZ vaccine, but in the end decided to do so and let national health authorities decide for themselves because it does not want to be seen as preventing them from using also this option in an absolute health emergency as the UK is currently facing.

A 98% certainty is perfectly fine in the mids of such a national health crisis like the UK is facing; it is NOT acceptable in a situation where you have other alternatives to reduce the pressure on your health services and hospitals: then it just needs to be 100%, sorry.

What do you mean by these "other alternatives" and your implication that the EU is not facing a health crisis like the uk?

The EU as a whole is still in the middle of a health and economic emergency, peoples lives are still very much disrupted, where case numbers are somewhat under control it is only because of lockdowns. On top of that, the B117 strain has an R 55% higher than the regular strain. That means any country where R is currently higher than 7 will see cases increase again, soon. Which EU country can show an R value less than 7 right now?

See https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02 ... irus-surge
This is the Danish view, one of the best performing EU countries both in number of cases and vaccinations.

I would rather have my government follow the UK approach. Statistically it is better to protect 2 older people 50% than one younger person 90%.

Many people in the world, in Asia and Oceania, can continue their lives with minimal disruption. These countries have the option to wait for more data and take a cautious approach. Not here.

That our EU governments are not succeeding where those other countries (often poorer) do, without vaccines, is massive government failure, to provide basic protection to their citizen. We have nothing to be proud of here.

Yes, I think the strategy of waiting (hoping) for the vaccines to get us out through this emergency is not the right one. Other approaches have been proven to be more effective, and cheaper. And the virus is mutating.

Dupli wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

Thank you, Tugger.

The end conclusion still is that none of the evidence presented by A-Z so far is meeting the highest possible standards on certainty generally expected by national health authorities before they start using the vaccine.

As I've explained before, the EMA hesitated very long to approve the AZ vaccine, but in the end decided to do so and let national health authorities decide for themselves because it does not want to be seen as preventing them from using also this option in an absolute health emergency as the UK is currently facing.

A 98% certainty is perfectly fine in the mids of such a national health crisis like the UK is facing; it is NOT acceptable in a situation where you have other alternatives to reduce the pressure on your health services and hospitals: then it just needs to be 100%, sorry.

What do you mean by these "other alternatives" and your implication that the EU is not facing a health crisis like the uk?

The EU as a whole is still in the middle of a health and economic emergency, peoples lives are still very much disrupted, where case numbers are somewhat under control it is only because of lockdowns. On top of that, the B117 strain has an R 55% higher than the regular strain. That means any country where R is currently higher than 7 will see cases increase again, soon. Which EU country can show an R value less than 7 right now?

See https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02 ... irus-surge
This is the Danish view, one of the best performing EU countries both in number of cases and vaccinations.

I would rather have my government follow the UK approach. Statistically it is better to protect 2 older people 50% than one younger person 90%.

Many people in the world, in Asia and Oceania, can continue their lives with minimal disruption. These countries have the option to wait for more data and take a cautious approach. Not here.

That our EU governments are not succeeding where those other countries (often poorer) do, without vaccines, is massive government failure, to provide basic protection to their citizen. We have nothing to be proud of here.

Yes, I think the strategy of waiting (hoping) for the vaccines to get us out through this emergency is not the right one. Other approaches have been proven to be more effective, and cheaper. And the virus is mutating.

Denmark when it comes to infection is currently quit low 8 per 100 000 but it has got the Brittish version of the covid virus that makes government nervous. Therefore heavy lockdowns has been executed.

Sweden has 29 per 100 000 and has in the end locked borders to Norway and Denmark because the Brittish virus in both countries but people lives normal and go to work and schools.

UK now 30 per 100 000 but only a few weeks ago a level of 90 000 per 100 000 has got a big outbreak has been serous but is as it seems depending on lockdown for not getting bacj to serous situation.

https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?ar ... lues=cases

Death in Sweden and EU is 0.8 per 100 000, denmark 0.3 but UK 1.52 one of the highest i Europe.

https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?ar ... ues=deaths

I think it is complicated to say that Denmark currently has a very serious situation compared to UK.

In EU it is Portugal without discussion that has the most serious disaster right now.

olle wrote:

Death in Sweden and EU is 0.8 per 100 000, denmark 0.3 but UK 1.52 one of the highest i Europe.

Are Covid deaths counted the same way in all countries?

The UK official figures include all deaths for any reason within 28 days of a positive Covid test. So a person can test positive, fully recover, then die in a car crash three weeks later and that will be counted as a Covid death.

scbriml wrote:

olle wrote:

Death in Sweden and EU is 0.8 per 100 000, denmark 0.3 but UK 1.52 one of the highest i Europe.

Are Covid deaths counted the same way in all countries?

Essentially yes, pretty much all follow WHO guidelines

The UK official figures include all deaths for any reason within 28 days of a positive Covid test. So a person can test positive, fully recover, then die in a car crash three weeks later and that will be counted as a Covid death.

That is often stated, and completely wrong since last August.. Just like other countries the UK counts following the WHO guidelines:

"A COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID-19 disease (e.g. trauma)".

https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk ... 19-deaths/

Best regards
Thomas

scbriml wrote:

olle wrote:

Death in Sweden and EU is 0.8 per 100 000, denmark 0.3 but UK 1.52 one of the highest i Europe.

Are Covid deaths counted the same way in all countries?

The UK official figures include all deaths for any reason within 28 days of a positive Covid test. So a person can test positive, fully recover, then die in a car crash three weeks later and that will be counted as a Covid death.

This is one thing we really have wrong among many others. It may be because, someone who is running towards the end of their life, may be finished off by covid?

scbriml wrote:

olle wrote:

Death in Sweden and EU is 0.8 per 100 000, denmark 0.3 but UK 1.52 one of the highest i Europe.

Are Covid deaths counted the same way in all countries?

The UK official figures include all deaths for any reason within 28 days of a positive Covid test. So a person can test positive, fully recover, then die in a car crash three weeks later and that will be counted as a Covid death.

As tommy1808 has already shown, standardisation has meanwhile happened to make statistical comparisons between all countries meaningful.
Anyway, I think 2 far more important parameters to judge how deep the health crisis in a country really is, are these:

1- the positivity rate,
which shows the percentage of people who test positive during a routine Covid test:
In my country, this ratio is hovering around 5% since the start of the year, for instance.
A map showing this data for the whole EU/EEA you can find here: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/ ... e-movement
(the orange map, which is the one at the bottom of the page)
The UK (just as CH) does not participate in the EU's ECDC, yet it comes from a ratio of 25% in certain areas only a couple of weeks ago , and is now still hovering around the low double digit percentage numbers nationwide, which is by far the highest in Europe.
This rate is a good indication of what the expected load of emergency care units and hospitals is going to be like in a couple of days/weeks, knowing X% of all those cases will ultimately end up there.

2- the current occupation rate of your hospitals and E.C. units,
which shows how much margin there still is:
In my country we have some 2000 beds on emergency care units available to covid patients, of which 304 are taken. That's an occupation rate of 15%
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2021/02/06 ... uari-2021/
Sadly I couldnt find any figures for the UK on this, so please fill me in on the occupation rate.

Together, these 2 figures give a good impression of how bad thngs are and how bad things are going to be in the near future.
If you have both figures in the green or in orange, it means you are in a very different position than when you'd have both in the red or even black of course.
Which is why in Belgium for instance, or federal and regional ministers of health have today decided to follow the advice by the High Council for Health and will not use the AZ vaccine for people over 55 years of age: it's a luxury we have overhere, not to risk using a vaccine which may turn out not be the most suitable for elderly people after all.
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2021/02/06 ... le-with-u/

Who is the best EU nation in terms of vaccinations right now?

Is there data on people having gotten the two doses ?

Arion640 wrote:

Who is the best EU nation in terms of vaccinations right now?

You can check this on the home page of the EU's Centre of Disease Control:
https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/exten ... racker-tab
It includes as EEA countries to the exception of Switzerland too as they participate in the EU's procurement programmes.

However, it's difficult to compare between countries, because the vaccination strategies are decided by the national goverments: some coutries use all of their vaccines to give as many first shots as they can (i.e. the UK strategy), while others keep the required volume of vaccines in backup to deliver all second shots (where needed) even in the absense of any further deliveries. Most countries seem to do something in between....