Oxford initial news

[tobee]

Covid-19: Oxford University vaccine shows 70% protection www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55040635

@Covidfears

Everything the UK does is shit

Tell us what country you come from then, so we can all avail of the safe, highly effective vaccine it produced in record time.

So with the half/full dose protocol, the 100 million doses we have ordered is enough to vaccinate the entire UK population and get 90% immunity. Fanbloodytastic.

The only challenge will be packaging it in syringes clearly labelled “Initial Dose” and “Second Dose” and keeping track of which one to give you.

I envisage mass vaccinating stations where they take your details and then direct you to the appropriate queue to get your 1st or 2nd dose.

Does anyone know how testing is done? Are the people in the trial given the vaccine/placebo and go about their everyday lives. Or are they deliberately exposed to the virus by being placed in rooms with Covid cases?
Presumably they aren't given anything else alongside the vaccine, such as a vitamin regime

Just going about our usual lives, with regular follow ups for blood tests (to check antibodies) and questions like if we've started new medication (to look for interactions) and how many people with covid we come across in a week / if we use PPE. Also weekly swabs in my phase. No deliberate exposure, but we were recruited within the NHS so more exposure through work than someone working from home.

I'm in the sub-group showing 90% efficacy so really excited to find out whether I had the covid vaccine or meningitis control

I’m particularly fascinated by the finding that halving the preliminary dose makes the dosing regime more efficacious. If this is a ‘real’ statistically significant result, and not a consequence of too small a sample size, say, there must be a reason behind it.

Is the suggestion that the first dose is some sort of ‘training/habituation dose’, for want of a better term? How low a dose might be required to prime the body for the second standard dose, if so? I have not seen this discussed by the scientists.

I would hazard a guess that the half dose first is more effective due to the immunogenic nature of adenoviruses. When you receive an adenoviral vaccine in addition to making antibodies to the coronavirus proteins you will also make them to the adenovirus. If you start with a half dose you will make less of them which means you won't clear the booster dose as quickly as you would if you had a full dose in the first injection. might not be wrong though.

Interesting! Thanks.

Covidfears

Everything the UK does is shit

Yes the UK being hugely successful at discovering several drugs that helped critically I'll patients survive was just rubbish wasn't it......

I'm hugely proud of our scientists and medical professionals and I'm hugely grateful to them.

@Covidfears

Everything the UK does is shit

Nope your opinion is shit What have YOU done that's worthwhile in all of this

@Redcherries

The oxford one is brilliant news for those who can’t take the other vaccines due to suppressed immune systems (whether due to medication or otherwise) from my understanding.

Is anyone else scared to feel positive at this point? I’m so scared we’ll celebrate then something bad will happen, normally I’m positive and could celebrate the sun rising.

Same - and I love your expression 'normally I could celebrate the sun rising'.

Already this morning I've had images of myself up a Norwegian fjord and walking across Spain in spring, then immediately thrown a damp blanket over them. I'm bloomin' excited really though!

I'll take it!

@Lindy2

Covidfears

Everything the UK does is shit

Yes the UK being hugely successful at discovering several drugs that helped critically I'll patients survive was just rubbish wasn't it......

I'm hugely proud of our scientists and medical professionals and I'm hugely grateful to them.

This. I think it's fair to say that the UK scientific/medical community have been at the forefront , not only in vaccine development but in recovery research. Next up, the Imperial vaccine.

@JS87

I would hazard a guess that the half dose first is more effective due to the immunogenic nature of adenoviruses. When you receive an adenoviral vaccine in addition to making antibodies to the coronavirus proteins you will also make them to the adenovirus. If you start with a half dose you will make less of them which means you won't clear the booster dose as quickly as you would if you had a full dose in the first injection. might not be wrong though.

That would make sense.

It also makes me wonder again about something I read early on - one of the potential issues with the adenovirus approach is that boosters could be ineffective, because the immune system would clear out the booster before it had a chance to provoke a response to the Covid spike protein.

So if the protection offered were not long lasting, you would need a different type of vaccine at a later date.

@SexTrainGlue

The flu jab is about 65% effective so its better then that

Flu jab is based on predicted strain, so that's like comparing apples and oranges. The jab is very effective, but it might turn out that strains other than those in the jab might be the ones in highest circulation.

If they administered 2 jabs, then the effectiveness will be on a par with the mRNA jabs. is there any information yet on how it performs on the elderly, and if it is suitable for those who cannot have other live vaccines?

What I ment is that no one moans about how effective the flu jab is not to compare them both just to compare the effectiveness. And I know people have already been saying how disappointed they are. Even though 2 injections of the Oxford vaccine can bring upto 90% protection which is excellent news. And none of the participants have had to go into hospital.

It's fantastic news. I think many people have underestimated the hugely limiting factor of the Pfizer vaccine needing to be stored at such extreme temperatures, particularly bearing in mind this government's near 100% failure rate during this period in implementing anything large scale at speed. The cost and movability also make it the most likely to reach the parts of the world that would be inaccessible if a cold chain had to be used for distribution. All in all it's a brilliant result.

To clarify:

"One regimen had 90% efficacy (2741 enrolled).
Another regimen had 62% efficacy (8895 enrolled).
Combined efficacy of 70%."
"Capacity to produce 3 billion doses in 2021."
mobile.twitter.com/BogochIsaac/status/1330845987074662400

Why would you take this vaccine that is only 70% effective if the others are 90% + effective ?

You might not be offered the other ones @LadyEloise.

Also I think depending how they do the does it can be 90% effective. Also this vaccine is much cheaper and doesn’t have such restrictive storage conditions.

Because the others are far harder to transport and far more costly and are likely to only be offered to the top tier

The effacy of Oxford coupled the ease and cost of both production/transporting and giving of the vaccination plus the number of doses ordered means this will be the one the majority of us who are willing to get it are likely to

I’d take whichever is available to me when the time comes. Large parts of the global population will not have access the to Pfizer vaccine because of the way it needs to be stored. It has been said by the experts that it’s not a limiting factor the U.K. but is in places without the necessary infrastructure. It can be placed on the vaccination programs that already exist in underdeveloped places world unlike the Pfizer one.

Why would you take this vaccine that is only 70% effective if the others are 90% + effective ?

It can be 90% effective taken as a half then full dose. The 70% figure was an average when administered in different doses. I'll take that.

It’s 62% with two full doses. 70% averaged overall when you include the smaller subgroup that had a half then full dose (2,741 people). Given the size of that subgroup the 90% efficacy rate won’t have the best confidence interval.

I’m pretty disappointed TBH. This is the vaccine most of us will be getting and it looks like a chunk will still get symptoms and be able to pass it on. Do we know if the elderly that were enrolled later were included in these numbers? The US based recipients were not.

I find myself rooting for the Oxford-Astra vaccine because there has been a pledge not to profit from the pandemic. No doubt, there will be money to be made once the virus situation is deemed to be no longer a pandemic, but it feels like the manufacturers, in this case, are adopting the correct moral position in current circumstances.

Also crucially it stopped severe infection and hospitalisation and appeared to reduce virus transmission from asymptomatic infections.

So far AZ/Oxford have given more detail about their findings than Moderna and Pfizer.

Thank you
@ineedaholidaynow.

I'm not in the UK so I don't know which one our ( Irish ) government will choose.

plus if it stops asymptomatic transmission it is fantastic news.