Frazzled, yes I don’t know either. From what I’ve heard GPs often don’t know far in advance what they will have. It is given to them by central services and not in their control.
Things are changing a bit aren’t they. Until now, almost all doses have been 1sts. Therefore any dose given has had to be replicated a few weeks on. But now we are on decent numbers if 2nd doses and those don’t need replicating a few weeks later, so giving 2nd doses is an easier and less potentially longer term problematic thing, when supply into the medium term is uncertain.
It’s hard to know if GPs have a sense of certainty of supply for 12 weeks time and therefore feel free to make some choices outside the official line, or if they are making those choices without thinking ahead or worrying about future supply. Ultimately, if it would have been given as 1st doses to over 50s or 1st dose to u dear 50s makes no odds....either of those would need a 2nd dose. And perhaps until this week, that’s where the choice has been and because it won’t impact 2nd doses they haven’t been bothered. I can see that.
However, from this week things are different. GPs are told to use any not for over 50s on 2nd doses. That does make a differnece for the future. It looks to me like they know the supply in 10-12 weeks will be lower. That means we must give fewer 1st doses now. And if GPs ignore this in bulk, there could be problems.
But I’d imagine if this is the case that supply for 10-12 weeks time is going to be severely curtailed, we will see GPs behaving differently in the next week or so and that the under 50s will dry up and we will see more 2nd doses being called in at 8-11 weeks, where there’s enough to do them as well as anyone who has reached the 12 week stage.
We don’t know what supply will be. I’m not sure GPs know either. Someone somewhere has a pretty good idea and it is their information which informs the instructions given to those jabbing. Whether the instructions being ignored matters a lot or not is unclear to me, but I hope not.