When can we start to see the vaccine saving lives?

[notevenat20]

We are told 88% of covid deaths come from groups 1-4. Already 11 million of those have been vaccinated and pretty much all of them will have been done in a weeks time. Full protection comes in about 21 days after vaccination but there is some protection from about day 14. This is all to say, should we expect deaths to plummet this month? I am really hoping so.

The second dose only adds 2%? That would make me wonder if it's worth doing at all, certianly in preference to a first dose for more people.

@Toorapid it’s worth doing second dose for longevity. But yes this is exactly why they have taken the strategy they have - because one dose gives already a high protection and it is better in the short term to have double the population vaccinated with one dose than half her population with two.

There are some strangely wrong comments here about facts you can just look up. Both Pfizer and Oxford give you the full protection after 21 days from the first dose (which is why I mentioned three weeks in my post). For Oxford we know from a study that this protection continues at the same level for at least 90 days and for Pfizer the best current scientific estimate is that it does.

Second, when we talk about 90% or 70% protection this refers to protection from any symptoms at all. Both vaccines give near 100% protection from the symptom we all case about, death (and also hospitalisation).

The second dose only adds 2%? That would make me wonder if it's worth doing at all, certianly in preference to a first dose for more people.

Given the uncertainty in these estimates it might in fact be exactly the same level of protection.

I guess we need to look to Israel who are further along than us. Any latest stats from Israel?

The answer to your question is that while lives have almost certainly been saved, we won’t see it in the death numbers for a couple more weeks because the people who are going to die today probably contracted Covid in early January when very few people had had their first shot and virtually no one had had it take effect.

You’ll see the effect in cases first, any time now once you’ve allowed about four weeks time for the vaccine to take effect then incubation of the disease, then in hospitalisation, then in deaths.

@StrangerHereMyself I thought it would have been that way too but I'm sure I heard Chris Whitty say we would see it in deaths first before cases and I couldn't understand that....

Whitty will have been answering a slightly different question about the headline numbers. Because the over eighties make up a huge share of the deaths and a much smaller proportion of cases then the impact of vaccination on the total numbers will be more obvious sooner in deaths rather than cases.

But if you look at the statistics grouped by age then you should see an impact of vaccination on cases first, then hospitalisation, then deaths.

It's already happening OP

StrangerHereMyself I thought it would have been that way too but I'm sure I heard Chris Whitty say we would see it in deaths first before cases and I couldn't understand that....

Elderly people who get covid often die very quickly sadly.

[quote Monkeytennis97]@StrangerHereMyself I thought it would have been that way too but I'm sure I heard Chris Whitty say we would see it in deaths first before cases and I couldn't understand that.... [/quote]
What Whitty means as it more or less stops 100% of hospitalization and deaths. These are the figures where we will see a big difference

Cases will still occur for quite some time due to no vaccine being 100% protection from infection. Which does mean some people will still get a relatively mild illness.

Over time as more people are vaccinated we will get less and less cases but that takes longer to see. The fact that we now know transmission is reduced with the vaccine is excellent but not a quick fix as this isn't 100% either.

@notevenat20

StrangerHereMyself I thought it would have been that way too but I'm sure I heard Chris Whitty say we would see it in deaths first before cases and I couldn't understand that....

Elderly people who get covid often die very quickly sadly.

Yes that's what I had presumed he meant.

Working age adults are those that are currently dying

@Skipsurvey

Working age adults are those that are currently dying

From ONs:

The total number of deaths involving COVID-19 in England and Wales has now passed 100,000 (103,394 registrations up to 22 January 2021). Nearly 75% of all COVID-19 deaths have occurred among people aged 75 years and over.

Our data are based on deaths registered in England and Wales and include all deaths where “COVID-19” was mentioned on the death certificates. Weekly figures are available by local authority and health board.

No evidence yet that that has currently changed dramatically but hopefully soon.

@Truelymadlydeeplysomeonesmum, i am talking rubbish

I suspect the death rate will drop quite quickly now that the over 80s have had their first dose, but hospitalisation rates will remain high for a while longer as the majority of people who end up in hospitals are younger and have either only recently been jabbed or haven't yet.

[quote Skipsurvey]@Truelymadlydeeplysomeonesmum, i am talking rubbish[/quote]
Well you have a good name for it👍😂😂😂

I agree with @Ethelfromnumber73

Nearly a third of deaths have been in care home residents. Most of those were not taken to hospital (it’s normal, indeed kind, for nursing and dementia patients to have end of life care in the home rather than be taken to hospital). Those have almost all had their first vaccinations now - those who are left. So we should see a noticeable improvement in deaths, with less impact on hospitalisations.

It’s when the over 50’s are done that the big impact on hospitalisations will be seen. The falls we are seeing in hospitalisations over the last week or so are probably more to do with lockdown than vaccination. Hence why we need to be very cautious about unlocking. Those numbers could rise very rapidly if we unlock too much too soon.

Too soon is before the over 50’s are vaccinated, plus 3 weeks for it to take effect. And before anyone calls me a lockdown lover, I’m not saying full lockdown needs to continue until then, just that opening everything before then would probably result in hospitalisations going up again. We will be able to open, but gradually. As the suppressing effect of the vaccines increases, we can afford to reduce the suppressing effect of other measures without letting all hell loose again.

@PuzzledObserver

I agree with *@Ethelfromnumber73*

Nearly a third of deaths have been in care home residents. Most of those were not taken to hospital (it’s normal, indeed kind, for nursing and dementia patients to have end of life care in the home rather than be taken to hospital). Those have almost all had their first vaccinations now - those who are left. So we should see a noticeable improvement in deaths, with less impact on hospitalisations.

It’s when the over 50’s are done that the big impact on hospitalisations will be seen. The falls we are seeing in hospitalisations over the last week or so are probably more to do with lockdown than vaccination. Hence why we need to be very cautious about unlocking. Those numbers could rise very rapidly if we unlock too much too soon.

Too soon is before the over 50’s are vaccinated, plus 3 weeks for it to take effect. And before anyone calls me a lockdown lover, I’m not saying full lockdown needs to continue until then, just that opening everything before then would probably result in hospitalisations going up again. We will be able to open, but gradually. As the suppressing effect of the vaccines increases, we can afford to reduce the suppressing effect of other measures without letting all hell loose again.

Yep, absolutely agree

If you look at the graph the elderly do still take up a lot of the hospitalisation. It is the ICU beds that are mostly under 65s.

@StealthPolarBear

As a pp said the first dose provides the majority of the protection. Why do people seem intent on denying this?

I was told when I got my Pfizer jab that it gave me 50% protection after about 2 weeks.

Oh sorry, I see loads of other posters have commented on your post already 🙈

I’ve been thinking about this.

It takes 2 -3 weeks for the vaccination to start working.

Another week for someone who catches it to get a positive test.

Another few days - a week for them to be hospitalised.

And another few days - a week for them to die.

(All on average obviously.)

We are seeing positive cases, hospitalisation and deaths going down at the moment but it is hard to know if that is a lockdown effect or a vaccination effect.

So.... cases. Takes 3 - 4 weeks to have an impact. 3 - 4 weeks ago was about 12th January. At that point we had vaccinated 2.6 million people. So about 5% of the population. So we should be starting to see reductions in rates faster than you would expect from just lockdown. And I think we are. The graph is going down fast. Faster than you would expect looking at graphs from the past. (Where it is a fast climb then a slow descent.)

Hospitalisation - I guess we are looking at about 7th January. So only about 1.5 million at that point. So some impact but not enormous amounts as the elderly are not the only ones in hospital but are quite a high proportion.

Deaths - takes us back to beginning of January - so only about 1 million vaccinated. Although a lot of these were the very frail. So some impact.

With deaths and hospitalisation again we are seeing the graphs falling faster than you would expect from this lockdown. (Which is weaker than the last lockdown as so many kids in school but the graphs are falling faster.)

So when will we start really seeing results that we can be sure are from vaccination not lockdown. I reckon 5 million vaccinated is a good number to look at as that is pretty much all the over 80s. That happened on about 21st Jan. Add on 5 - 6 weeks and that takes us to end Feb. So I reckon by end Feb that we will see deaths falling much faster than cases and we will be able to say with confidence that that is vaccination not lockdown.

Only my theory - not an expert - but I’m good at numbers and have looked at them a lot.

@Truelymadlydeeplysomeonesmum

If you look at the graph the elderly do still take up a lot of the hospitalisation. It is the ICU beds that are mostly under 65s.

Yes there’s a big difference between the median age in hospitals and in ICU, but because ICU patients take up so much nursing resource we really want to be making an impact on that number before we can count the NHS as “protected”.