Vaccine thread

[Layladylay234]

I know someone on another thread suggest someone start one of these. Considering I've just watched a video with the person leading the vaccine trial,I thought now's as good a time as any. Here's the link to the video,it's really hopeful

I think we can be fairly certain that when a vaccine is proven to give even 6 months protection, the governments magic money tree will appear and they’ll pay an awful lot of money to get it out to UK population ASAP! Let’s face it, the economy & their time in government pretty much depends on a vaccine being whittled out ASAP! If they can manage it by Spring next year, people will hail it a huge success & it’ll potentially save their bacon!

There's this one too:-

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-india-53230607

I disagree with that because this all stops when enough are vaccinated.
The quicker that can be achieved the better and will save lives. As surely there are some groups that wont be able to be vax anyway? Maybe pregnant women?
Plus they have said before that elderly dont make a good response to a lot of vax.
As long as there isnt supply issues in the UK.
Also a child not likely to die but more likely to spread than a lot of other groups and the way the gov plans are they can easily spread it to 100s at school.
Most effective would probably be vacinnating the areas with low immunity hotspots.

This thread has been quiet for a while. Has there been any updates anyone would like to share?

Why the difference between what the pharmaceutical companies say (vaccine ready in the Autumn) and the government warning us that this is the new normal until Spring 2021? Is the government going to underbuy and hope some of us survive the test of getting it and surviving this winter?
Also I see 2 vaccine doses may be necessary for one of the vaccines (Oxford?) so that means twice as many are required.
I can see a need for a list of who might get first access, but I do believe that everyone should get the vaccine as soon as possible and if a decentralised approach of vaccinations in schools, supermarkets, GPs, is used then it should be possible to get everyone who consents vaccinated in a few weeks.
Since the UK is not joining in the EU scheme, presumably we have established that all the UK-produced vaccine will not leave the country?
As previous poster said, getting everyone vaccinated solves many of the economic problems so the government should spend more on ensuring universal vaccination and then less will be required in propping up the economy.

www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/sanofi-glaxosmithkline-near-625m-covid-19-vaccine-supply-deal-u-k-government-report
This link gives a summary of the UK's position a couple of days ago.

Worrying that countries are going to buy up all the vaccine produced by companies in their country. Let's hope the UK produces a vaccine that works or else there doesn't seem much hope of importing one.

www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/after-positive-early-data-pfizer-biontech-ceos-sound-off-vaccine-timelines
This link mentions some timelines with vaccine ready by end of year, but one person saying virus will be here 10 years!

The government have already ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine (40 million to be delivered in October and the rest by the end of the year IF the trials prove the vaccine is effective).

The U.K. will have priority but Oxford also has deals with countries in Europe and the US and there are plans to assist lower income countries to access the vaccine too. As I understand it manufacturing capacity for the Oxford vaccine stands at around 2 billion doses.

Personally, I think the government are preparing people for a worst case scenario. If the Oxford trials are not successful it will almost certainly be next year before a vaccine is rolled out. Much better to prep people to expect that than tell them it will definitely all be sorted by Christmas only to have to back track.

The US government have stipulated 50% efficacy as sufficient for a vaccine to be approved. But what worries me is the lack of international cooperation. There are quite a few different companies in the US developing vaccines, but if the UK's eggs are all in one basket with the Oxford trial (and Imperial College trial that is further behind), then the US does not seem likely to be allowing export of vaccines.
Also one of the links I posted above states the UK is reliant on importing nearly all its vaccines currently. So where is the enormous manufacturing capacity required going to come from - abroad?

We obviously can't control what the US do. I agree There is the U.K. vaccine manufacturing centre which is currently being constructed and is due to come on line by the middle of next year.

The U.K. government have put quite a lot of money into the Sanofi/GSK vaccine which is due to be ready mid 2021. As I understand it the U.K. government have declined the EU vaccine group because the U.K. is further ahead in its procurement discussions. I'm not convinced that's true but I hope it is!

Individual manufacturers will have their own arrangements for producing their own vaccines. I know Astra Zeneca are using labs in India to produce large quantities of the Oxford vaccine.

I honestly think that getting a working vaccine to the U.K. population as soon as possible is the government's get out of jail free card. If we are one of the first countries to be vaccinated I think they reckon people will forgive them all the other cock ups!

www.vmicuk.com/about

neutralintelligence
but if the UK's eggs are all in one basket with the Oxford trial (and Imperial College trial that is further behind)

Three possibilities for the UK:

Oxford/AstraZenica, Imperial/Morningside Ventures, plus GlaxoSmithKline/Sanofi (your first link).

A while back I’m sure I heard that the results of oxfords phase 2 trials were due in the next few weeks. I’m sure it’s been more than a few weeks, has there been anything announced?
I don’t mean results if whether people have caught Covid, I mean the results of whether the volunteers raised a good antibody response etc....
The more time goes on, the more I’m putting all my hopes into this vaccine (or any vaccine, but one from the UK, this year would be amazing and could salvage some normality for us relatively soon....)

Oxford is generally considered to be delayed as they had to shift the trails to Brazil and South Africa as not enough people here had covid so it would take longer to test (they need 30 people to get covid obviously preferably all in the plasibo group!) to be reasonably confident it works and they need those people to catch it naturally.

Yes, I also heard that Oxford trial results now not expected in September after all. Seeing the massive second wave graph from the study commissioned by Sir Patrick Valance this morning, I am very worried about this winter. The only way to avoid that massive second wave is a vaccine programme.

This article is from a week ago and says they’re still hoping for preliminary results around the end of August.
www.google.com/amp/s/inews.co.uk/news/science/coronavirus-vaccine-uk-latest-oxford-race-scientists-august-covid-19-trials-497704/amp

Thanks for the good link from inews. Still depressing that only 'emergency use' (basically what would be covered by off-licence/special licence/compassionate grounds etc.) would be possible even in October with proper licensing in 2021. That still doesn't tally with the 30 million doses for the UK in September - although if 2 doses are needed then that's only 15 million people covered, and there are millions of people in high-risk groups apparently and there are 1.5 million NHS workers.

@neutralintelligence sure it’s not what what we might wish for but seeing as average vaccine development time is 10-15 years even getting something in the first half of next year would be outstanding work.

Yes, I know. But working in the field, I know the massive amount of time involved in to-ing and fro-ing to ethics committees with regulatory admin and documentation, literally months and months out of a year of development, so I would hope that a vaccine could be done v. quickly if some formalities were fast-tracked. I suspect some of the more positive news is the PR departments of pharmaceutical companies seeing a chance to boost share values/company value and needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. But I also think the government needs to buy enough for each citizen not just the priority groups to avoid resentment and to really get people back to normal. With Covid-19 there is no such thing as a low-risk person on an individual basis because the individual response varies widely.

Thank you for the info.
Will keep watching for updates....
Agree that we would need everyone who is willing to be vaccinated- not everyone will agree so the more who are eligible the better....

wonder why they're not trying it in Florida or some of these places with 15,000 new cases a day!? Surely that would be an excellent population to test on.

They are testing in Brazil. But agree Florida would also be a great place to test it!

As far as I can tell from registries of clinical trials, the Oxford vaccine is only being trialled in the UK, at 20 sites. Maybe another vaccine is being tested elsewhere? For UK citizens, we are only likely to get prompt access to vaccines being developed here and that seems dependent on manufacturing taking place abroad for the first few months at least.

The Oxford vaccine is definitely being trialled in Brazil.

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-06-28-trial-oxford-covid-19-vaccine-starts-brazil

OK, that's good news. Thanks for link.

Here's an update on the Imperial vaccine www.imperial.ac.uk/news/199274/covid-19-trial-progresses-cautious-optimism-grows/
The goal is to make it available to every person on the planet. I really hope they can pull it off.