Would you pay privately for a vaccine?

[Bluewavescrashing]

If so, what's your reasoning and how much would you pay?

Yes. I want to be able to choose which of the vaccines I take, and if that choice is available privately, that's what I'll be doing. I'm in no rush to get it though so I wouldn't do it for queue-jumping reasons.

There will come a point where the government has done what they perceive as the most at risk and will slow down or stop. I probably won’t make it into the priority lists but do have some health issues that mean I really don’t want COVID. I suspect by the end of the year or failing that 2022 it will be more akin to the flu vaccine where you can buy it privately if the NHS won’t give it to you, without affecting NHS stocks, and large corporates will do what they do now with flu and offer all employees a COVID jab to minimise absences.

I would purely for the fact that my DH is CEV, he should get his fairly soonish but I’m far down the list. Just that bit more protection for him. If we had no one at home shielding then no

No,,im not even up for the free one yet.

@Marpan
One of the ex USSR countries - sinovac (Chinese version) is going to be available privately there after Phase III is officially concluded.

I would pay up to £200 as it's looking unlikely I'll get one on the NHS. As a teacher I'd feel much better having one. The government have bought mostly Oxford vaccines for the at risk groups. So I'd do it if I could buy the Pfizer one and get it done somewhere that wouldn't affect the NHS, such as at Boots who currently provide private vaccinations. It was very easy to get my children vaccinated against chickenpox there.

No, I don't think people should be able to pay to queue jump.
The people who need it most should not be bumped by those paying

@Kokeshi123

Only if I could be sure it was not being taken from a person who needed it more.

In Israel, when vaccines are left over, the nurses will bring in willing volunteers off the street who are happy to have the remaining vaccines rather than letting them expire. It might be worthwhile having a system where people could hang around the distributing hospitals at the end of the day "on standby" and volunteer for any doses which are left. As about 1/5 of the population are refuses, hospitals might have quite a lot of leftover vaccine on their hands.

This is happening here. My friend is a GP and was on standby yesterday because his surgery were taking the vaccine to a care home. If they unexpectedly had any vaccine left he would jump in his car to go and have it rather than it be wasted.

I’d pay whatever it took if it meant I could travel to see my fiancé 😓 5 months apart and counting, and I don’t know how much longer I can cope being apart

I’d pay 10k for me and my child not to have it. Should some sort of vaccination passport ever come in, that’s the kind of money I’d try to scramble together to get out of having it, if that were at all possible.

I was working in a primary care centre which serves as a vaccination centre and received a ‘leftover’ dose at the end of the session as there was some left would have otherwise have been discarded.

If I could pay for my 24 year old DS who suffers from severe health anxiety to have the vaccine I would do it in a heartbeat.

why don't you go first OP, might seem less like a DM journalist if you do...

😂 I'm an infant school teacher, could hardly be further from the truth!

I would absolutely pay for DP to have the vaccine. He’s vulnerable (not extremely officially but the fucker is a doctor dodger so who knows) and I’m frightened for him.

He may not top the national priority list but I need him and so does my dd.

In a situation where the vulnerable had already been vaccinated, we had more than enough doses available for everyone, and paying for a private vaccine would mean both cutting down on my waiting time and freeing up my NHS slot for someone else, I'd pay up to about £30. At that point I assume protection on a societal level would have been more or less achieved already, so it would only be to stop myself getting sick anyway. £30 to prevent the small chance that I'm one of the low-risk people who gets a serious illness and/or long term complications seems like a fair price.

Before that point I wouldn't pay at all, as it should be allocated based on clinical need rather than who can afford to jump the queue.

It won’t be about queue jumping. At some point fairly soon, the length of time it’s taking to get everyone vaccinated will have absolutely nothing to do with limited supplies of the vaccine itself, and everything to do with the (completely understandable) inability of the NHS to administer it fast enough. Logistics.

Once there is enough vaccine available that making it privately available won’t impact the government programme, it should then become available privately. At which point, yes, I’d pay.

Increasing production rates of the vaccine will be much easier than increasing capacity in the NHS to deliver it, unfortunately.

@ChablisandCrisps

No, although I could afford to. Not while there is not enough available for everyone. It's morally wrong. I have very wealthy friends who are already trying (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) to source the vaccine. They'd be willing to pay thousands.

I don't want to be living in a country where celebrities and the wealthy are vaccinated before the most vulnerable.

I would but I wouldn’t want to take a vaccine from someone who needed it more. So I would want to for selfish reasons but don’t think I could square it morally

I don't like the idea. I can pay if I wanted to, but I don't think it's right, unless the vaccine is freely available to everyone who wants them.

No or at least not until it was only necessary for travel like yellow fever - absolutely not to jump any queues. But as soon as I’m top of the list I’m right there!

I would pay. I am also following the situation in my home country if it's coming available there I will go and visit.

Yes, once the most vulnerable are vaccinated though as that's only fair. i would pay £1000 each if needed, we can afford it so why not? Hopefully we won't need to though as sounds like the plan is to vaccinate all adults this year.

No I would not want to jump the queue

They are not available privately, the manufacturers will only sell to governments, so it's academic.

I’d pay £300-£400 privately if the government abandoned the vaccine programme before they got to us. I wouldn’t queue jump though.