Good news part 7

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

For all your vaccine news, treatment development stories and other positive things to make you feel there is hope for the future!
Good news only please!

Useful websites we are referring to a lot:

Government daily statistics

Worldometer for international case number comparisons

Covid Messenger for local authority figures, thanks to LittleOwl for all her hard work!

OurWorldInData international vaccination figures

Omnicalculator vaccine queue calculator NB Please don’t take this too seriously- it depends what vaccine delivery speed and uptake you estimate so it’s not written in stone.

Thanks for the new thread!

Thanks for that Frazzled. So good to see it still going well even on a weekend.

I would expect with the snow to see a drop in today's figures, but hopefully not too bad. My in laws have theirs this evening, weather permitting! Mind you FIL drives a 4x4 and has already stated not a lot is getting between him and a vaccine!

@chri55ie

Another nearly 500,000 injection day yesterday!

Another way to think of that is as if every man, woman and child in the whole city of Liverpool got a jab yesterday.

Britain messed up a lot of things, but they're playing a blinder with the vaccination scheme. Fingers crossed it continues!

@Frazzled2207

See chart for first doses

Overall that is brilliant but it does worry me a little too

London has such a large population and the highest cases still. Though these are dropping fast. I am not sure if the vaccine availability here has been less or take up is less.

On the more positive side they are opening up more vaccination centres and l think the population is younger. So maybe once they start the younger age groups things will look better.

Wow that is an amazing way to look at it. The whole of Liverpool!

Those hospital admissions on covid message are looking good too

Schools I can't see anything said we don't know already. It has looked increasingly more likely that March would be the earliest. All going well at are current speed of vaccinations and cases dropping Easter at the very latest.

@IcedPurple absolutely agree - I love how well we’ve done - really have pulled a blinder 😊

@FuzzyPuffling and @Inastatus thanks for steering me over here!

I will copy my message from the old thread here too so more may see it.

In response to your reply on the old thread; I think that is what I was thinking, nobody really knows, but then that seemed to also clash a bit with the Israeli news reports.

I've just watched Dr John Campbell and now feel a bit flatter. Bugger! Will trawl through this thread now and hopefully lift out of it a bit.

Anyone else, my previous post is below...
Hi everyone, I'm having a bit of a down day today. Not hugely but there just seems too much uncertainty around. It also might be as I am not fully understanding a lot of what I am reading. I know newspapers are also trying to grab attention with evocative headlines, so wonder if a lot of it is just that. Hence, can one of you help me out with this...

I have seen that JVT said that even those vaccinated can still carry and transmit the virus. However, I thought that the links that were posted earlier this week on the thread about transmission from Israel looked 'promising' that it will stop transmission too. Or is it that nobody knows, or that nobody in the UK will stick their neck out and say it slows or limits transmission as it'll mean that people start breaking lockdown rules far faster than we / the NHS can cope with?

If transmission isn't as effected as is hoped, does that mean we have to wear masks etc for much much longer, even if the majority of over 50's have been vaccinated?

I think I've been reading too much, and this thread is brilliant, and managed to get myself confused.

So, if someone can translate everything in idiots terms, I'd be most grateful!

I watched only the first 5 mins of John Campbell today but I’m sure he is fairly confident that the vaccine will stop some levels of transmission. JVT can’t say with certainty that it will stop yet as phase 4 not done so erring on side of caution and assuming nothing. That was my take on it and I felt that it makes a lot of sense.

Thanks @chri55ie. I have watched the whole thing. It seemed quite bleak but, BUT, the vaccine side of things is still looking good. He said it's 'possible' it would need 'tweaking' for the South African variant but both Pfzier and AZ will work with the other one (can't remember, the US one..?)

That's good about transmission too. Its kind of what I am aiming for really! I am, like we all are, so desperate to have some kind of normality back and it feels, today at least, that we are just having to get over hurdle after hurdle

I would expect with the snow to see a drop in today's figures, but hopefully not too bad
Not everywhere has snow do while it might cause the odd person to miss out or a rural vaccination centre to close I wouldn't have thought it would mean a big drop.

Agggh must proofread

Not everywhere has snow SO while it might cause.......

The efficacy rates seems so high with these vaccines that even if the SA variant lowers the efficacy there is still some wiggle room. Check out @sailorrooscout on Twitter they are quite reassuring on this

.

Has there been any recent positive news regarding the UK’s decision to leave 12 weeks between doses? I just keep reading stuff about us being the only country with this strategy and other countries think our approach needs to be challenged etc.

@truly
London has a significantly younger population hence less vaccines to far. That all said it hasn’t been entirely fairly distributed and apparently this week the north east are getting less and london more.

They are using the data from the moderns trial as the basis for the 12 week wait. There was a halt in the trial for safety checks and they have compared the outcome of patients whose second dose was delayed with the rest

@Inastatus

Has there been any recent positive news regarding the UK’s decision to leave 12 weeks between doses? I just keep reading stuff about us being the only country with this strategy and other countries think our approach needs to be challenged etc.

Not really but it looks like France are thinking about delaying the second dose as well:

www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-01-23/french-health-body-recommends-delaying-second-covid-shot-to-six-weeks-after-first

493,013 new doses have been administered since yesterday (22 Jan). This includes 491,970 first and 1,043 second doses.

6.82 million doses have been administered as of 23 Jan. This includes 6.35 million first and 469,660 second doses

@Daddeee

493,013 new doses have been administered since yesterday (22 Jan). This includes 491,970 first and 1,043 second doses.

6.82 million doses have been administered as of 23 Jan. This includes 6.35 million first and 469,660 second doses

[quote JemimaPyjamas]**@FuzzyPuffling* and @Inastatus* thanks for steering me over here!

I will copy my message from the old thread here too so more may see it.

In response to your reply on the old thread; I think that is what I was thinking, nobody really knows, but then that seemed to also clash a bit with the Israeli news reports.

I've just watched Dr John Campbell and now feel a bit flatter. Bugger! Will trawl through this thread now and hopefully lift out of it a bit.

Anyone else, my previous post is below...
Hi everyone, I'm having a bit of a down day today. Not hugely but there just seems too much uncertainty around. It also might be as I am not fully understanding a lot of what I am reading. I know newspapers are also trying to grab attention with evocative headlines, so wonder if a lot of it is just that. Hence, can one of you help me out with this...

I have seen that JVT said that even those vaccinated can still carry and transmit the virus. However, I thought that the links that were posted earlier this week on the thread about transmission from Israel looked 'promising' that it will stop transmission too. Or is it that nobody knows, or that nobody in the UK will stick their neck out and say it slows or limits transmission as it'll mean that people start breaking lockdown rules far faster than we / the NHS can cope with?

If transmission isn't as effected as is hoped, does that mean we have to wear masks etc for much much longer, even if the majority of over 50's have been vaccinated?

I think I've been reading too much, and this thread is brilliant, and managed to get myself confused.

So, if someone can translate everything in idiots terms, I'd be most grateful![/quote]
I was on a call yesterday with some immunologists and epidemiologists and they all agreed there are no signs of 'vaccine escape' which is (apparently!) when a virus mutates so that a vaccine can't target it.

They are slightly more concerned about the SA strain but said it is most likely something that can be tweaked to be as effective, just like we tweak the flu vaccine each year to tackle the dominant strain.

Btw, having bad brain day ... it was the Oxford vaccine trial that had the pause ..

This was the other thing I took away from hearing that immunologist speak yesterday which I take to be good news-ish.

On my Scottish Parliament committee meeting thing yesterday there was an epidemiologist and a woman from the British council of immunologists (or something like that).

She was asked about the 12 week thing and what she said was this: immunologists support the 12 week decision because there is no evidence against it. Pfizer's research shows that it's fine to wait 6 weeks but they did not test up to 12 weeks. Their judgement is that there's no reason/evidence to show this can't be extended, and the greater gain is to get first jabs into more people as the first jab gives most of your immunity, it's the second jab that boosts it a bit, but the second jab is more to extend its lifecycle.

That's how I understand it after hearing from those people yesterday. One guy did say we should stick with the evidence and use it as licensed but the immunologist and someone in charge of vaccines somewhere else said they support the government's plan only if everyone gets their second jab in the 12 week period.

@midgebabe - thanks.
@BBCONEANDTWO - interesting that France is thinking about it too, thank you.

[quote Frazzled2207]@truly
London has a significantly younger population hence less vaccines to far. That all said it hasn’t been entirely fairly distributed and apparently this week the north east are getting less and london more.[/quote]
Yes. I hear my area is in the London north east partnership and we are getting targeted for more help.

My concerns are supply but also take up being a very mixed community. They have started a lot of work on convincing black and Asian people the vaccine is safe. So hopefully that will help.

Madly the worryingly high numbers of people in London that had the virus may be a saving grace is taking up is less than national average. At least there will be a lot of natural immunity out there too.