Other countries offering choice of vaccine

[doireallyneedaname]

I have relatives in Cyprus who are able to choose with vaccine they’d like - AZ or Pfizer.

They have been given an appointment for next week and told that they will be told beforehand which vaccine they are having, and if they want the other they can reschedule for that one.

I just read a news article which seems to confirm this.

Appreciate the population is minuscule compared to the UK and many other countries but given the recent news re AZ efficacy against the SA strain (which I believe will likely be the same against further mutations) - I can’t help but wish we’d order more Pfizer and give people the choice.

@doireallyneedaname another variant could come along which the pfizer vaccine might not be so efficient on, so what will you do then? I think a top up in autumn will work well, spring and summer are round the corner, people will be outside so less chance if it spreading. You can choose which vaccine in the UK if you book online but it depends on what’s available and what if you can’t get second dose of Pfizer because of delivery problems?

But we don't have enough of the Pfizer vaccine to give it to everybody! We need to vaccinate with AZ to get as many people as much protection as possible. It looks as though AZ should protect against hospitalisation and death. It might not offer as much protection against mild illness but so what? It's not ideal but do people really go out of their way to avoid every little illness going (I'm clearly not talking about vulnerable people here)?

A few months ago we would have jumped at the chance of a vaccine to prevent serious illness and now it's not good enough apparently.

@LemonTT all AZ here. My parents and myself (CEV) all had AZ as did all my CEV friends. I've only actually heard of one having Pfizer! Wonder if it depends on area

I actually want the AZ vaccine due to concerns over mRNA and autoimmune conditions, so for that reason I wish there was a choice.

As it is I'm happy to wait longer and/or pay privately to get the vaccine I prefer. Everyone should have the choice about what they put in their body, even if others disagree with their reasoning. If you don't care which one you get because you never have any opinion on medicines, just blindly taking what you're given, that's up to you. Not everyone thinks like that. (I'm aware that the majority of people who would be happy with either don't think that way, but 'I never question any other medicine I take, doctors know best' always comes up on these threads.)

I suspect, could be wrong, that fast forward 6 months, and with the vaccine hesitant people, the government will want people vaccinated, and so, people will be offered a choice.
Could be wrong.

At which point does it let you choose the vaccine (or at least which vaccine that centre is offering) as my mum booked online and it didn’t tell us!

@Stressedoutsomuch

I can’t get worked up over this. The Government have done a phenomenal job in obtaining and rolling out the vaccine.

Allowing people to window shop is pointless. Both vaccines deliver significant protection.

You could always refuse your vaccination op to wait for your preferred choice.

Agree with this except that if you refuse what is offered I don’t think there is a guarantee at all that you could get the other By April there will should be 5 on the scene.

No. The NHS have done a phenomenal job despite the Government

No. The NHS vaccinate, but the ordering, planning and rollout was government and associated committees and private consultancies.

@Frazzled2207 good point about other vaccines coming through, another one being produced in the UK, we are very fortunate. There could always be another pandemic round the corner, the fact we have managed to produce vaccines so quickly and manufacture here is positive for the future too.

I get the feeling that no one really knows how this will play out. Time will tell. The amazing thing is that we have vaccines in less than a year and more on the way. They need more time and more analysis to see the impacts of the vaccines and different strategies deployed in different countries. There will be more variants besides the SA variant in time and the longer the virus rages the more likelihood of these things. So right now any vaccine is better than no vaccine.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat it’s not just Pfizer that has shown to be more effective, it’s all the other approved vaccines. Why aren’t we trying to source more? Tbh I cannot imagine we’d ever turn our back on our “own vaccine” even if it was 50% less effective than others on the dominant strain. Ridiculous.

[quote Chloemol]@CherryRoulade

The vaccines were not signed off for use until December so how could they vaccinate in November?

Personally I think the Government have done a good job[/quote]
They couldn’t vaccinate until sign off, obviously. They could be (and we’re) ready to go from point of sign off but we’re stopped because Johnson had an opportunity to don a fancy dress costume and didn’t want to miss the front page.

Sad how many believe this government propaganda despite clear evidence of cronyism, a lack of transparency and untruths.

@Stressedoutsomuch I agree I can't believe this is a thread they are trying to get as many vaccinated and still people question it .. other countries are smaller too jeez

@doireallyneedaname do you think we should turn our back on AZ? Do you think the rest of the world should too, even though it’s been signed off by EMA and WHO?

CherryRoulade Unless you are involved in the planning and rollout and have evidence, you are talking nonsense. I happen to have several contacts who were, and no such thing ever happened.

@Baileysforchristmas I think we need a vaccine that is more effective at providing protection against a variety of strains. My understanding is that the SA variant is of a significant difference yet Pfizer still protects against it. Perhaps it’s the vaccine type, I have no idea.

I don’t have the answers, all I know is that I won’t feel safe with AZ as it stands and I can’t really believe that people would.

I do @doireallyneedaname - my mum, my next door neighbour, 3x colleagues. All 50-60 & ECV, they’ve all had Pfizer. They didn’t have any choice, it was just what was available on the day.

This is a good summary by Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, The Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia:

“The publication of the results of the phase 3 trial of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID vaccine have now been published. This follows the publication of the results of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine by just a few days and it is very tempting to compare the two. As has been widely reported the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is an mRNA vaccine whilst the Oxford AstraZeneca is an adenoviral vector vaccine.

“The Pfizer/BioNTech included data on 43,448 participants compared to 8,895 in the Oxford AstraZeneca standard dose regimen and 2741 in the Oxford AstraZeneca low dose regimen.

“As far as I can tell both trials had similar primary outcome measures so they were measuring the same thing.

“The estimated vaccine efficacy for Pfizer from 7 days after the second injection was 95.0% (Confidence Intervals 90.3 to 97.6%). By contrast the efficacy for the Oxford standard dose regimen was 62·1% (41·0 to 75·7%) and for the low dose regiment was 90·0% (67·4 to 97·0%). Reflecting the smaller number of participants in the two Oxford dose trials, its efficacy estimates are much less precise and so more uncertain than the Pfizer study. The Pfizer study presented estimates of the effectiveness in older people and found efficacy >90% in >55, > 65 and >75 year olds, though confidence intervals were wider in the older age groups. The efficacy of the Oxford vaccine in people over 55 years could not be assessed and the low dose vaccine was not given to people over 55 so there is no data on that dose regimen. The Pfizer study reports good efficacy in Black and Hispanic participants. The Oxford study has not yet reported on efficacy in BAME populations. Neither study had sufficient numbers of cases of severe COVID or fatalities to make precise estimates of efficacy at preventing severe disease. Of ten cases of severe COVID in the Pfizer study 9 were in the placebo group and 1 in the vaccine group. In the Oxford study there was just 1 severe case and ten hospitalised cases and they were in the placebo group. The Pfizer study did not report studies of the impact of its vaccine on asymptomatic infection. The Oxford study reported that efficacy for “asymptomatic or symptoms unknown infection” based on weekly self-swabbing was 3·8% (−72·4 to 46·3%) following standard dose and 58·9% (95% CI 1·0 to 82·9) following low dose regimen.

“As to safety The Pfizer trial reported serious adverse reactions in 0.6% of vaccine recipients and 0.5% of placebo recipients. In the Oxford study serious adverse events were reported in 168 participants, 79 of whom were in the vaccine group (1.4%) and 89 were in the control group (1.5%), many of whom received a meningococcal vaccine. It would appear that the Pfizer vaccine study reported a lower risk of serious adverse events than the Oxford study but in both studies the probability of severe side effects was not that different between the vaccine and control arms. But many of the Oxford control subjects received a meningococcal vaccine which itself may cause serious adverse events so this needs to be interpreted carefully.

“So in conclusion the results do suggest that both vaccines are effective and safe. However, the Pfizer vaccine has rather greater reported efficacy than the Oxford standard dose vaccine and possibly fewer serious adverse reactions. The Pfizer study also has evidence showing high efficacy in older age groups and in Black and Hispanic but not yet Asian individuals. The Oxford study does not yet enable efficacy in these at risk groups to be determined. As yet there is no phase 3 data on the low dose Oxford vaccine in people over 55 years old, the main target group for immunization against COVID”.

via: www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-phase-3-results-for-the-pfizer-biontech-bnt162b2-mrna-covid-19-vaccine/

That said, don't get hung up on efficacy percentages and other details - the best decision you can make is to take whatever vaccine you are offered, they all offer good protection against the variant that is dominant in the UK.

The variant originally identified in South Africa as well as the UK voc with the same mutation are not going to be dominant here "in the next 4 weeks", that's just not mathematically possible.
And we are not Cyprus - offering people a menu of vaccine choices would be a logistical nightmare, would massively complicate and slow down our very impressive rollout and would cost lives.

@AradiaGC - my mum & two colleagues had Pfizer with autoimmune conditions 🤷🏼‍♀️ so far, so good. Not even any side effects..

[quote Baileysforchristmas]@doireallyneedaname do you think we should turn our back on AZ? Do you think the rest of the world should too, even though it’s been signed off by EMA and WHO?[/quote]
Nope, I think the AZ one is fine for younger people as it also stops spread and they are the ones still going out to work largely. They shouldbe vaccinated now in tandem with older and more people vulnerable people who get the Pfizer.

Summary of vaccine trial results so far.

(We should also have even more robust data on AZ from the US trial in the next few weeks, as well as preliminary 'real world' PHE data on the UK vaccine rollout coming soon.)

@doireallyneedaname so you think the UK shouldn’t be using it at all?

[quote doireallyneedaname]@Baileysforchristmas I think we need a vaccine that is more effective at providing protection against a variety of strains. My understanding is that the SA variant is of a significant difference yet Pfizer still protects against it. Perhaps it’s the vaccine type, I have no idea.

I don’t have the answers, all I know is that I won’t feel safe with AZ as it stands and I can’t really believe that people would.[/quote]
Seriously ? Some people are never happy !!! This thread is annoying outta here

@CoffeeandCroissant thanks for that, very informative.

Maybe not 4 weeks, but even in 4 months - we won’t have a tweaked vaccine and it would rip through everyone again, then how long would it take to vaccinate everyone again? Seems crazy when there is a vaccine that can protect against it now.

@Baileysforchristmas Perhaps using it in similar scenarios to other countries. For those least at risk. I still feel it poses a significant problem though.