In direct contrast to the UK extending the gap between 1st and 2nd doses from a maximum of 3 months to 6 months, the UK is now reducing the gap between 2nd doses and boosters from 6 months to 3 months.
I think this is down to two factors. Firstly winter is coming and secondly, the emergence of omicron.
There will be a lot of people suddenly eligible for booster shots in the next few days so I am sceptical that we have the human resources necessary to meet the demand. They could easily vaccinate a million per day over the next month but they will be restricted to no more than around 600,000/day is my guess due to not having enough people to put the needles in arms at this point (as they are more thinly spread than they were in spring).
Markets sliding off the back of comments by Moderna chief saying it will take a few months to recallibrate (wrong phrase I know) the vaccines to tackle Omicron.
Hopefully current vaccines will still do enough to reduce the seriousness of these illnesses.
Yeah, the UK and a few other countries established some 100 day working group. I forget it’s proper title but it’s got “100 days” in it!
Found it…it was part of the G7 stuff back in June
It aims to go from identifying a Variant of Concern to rolling out a bespoke vaccine to the general population in 100 days or less. So that includes development, trials, approval, production, roll-out etc. Oxford have already said that they can rapidly update the AZ vaccine if necessary (which I was pleasantly surprised by). It may well be that the mRNA vaccines are more easily tweaked more quickly though.
This is precisely the scenario that the government anticipated when it joined forces with Curevac last year so this is finally their chance to shine…or not as the case may be!
Maybe however if you have comorbidilities don’t waste time trying to find a center that permits you to do that. I have a RDV for the same vaccin at the same centre as that’s what’s offered at a place of my convenience. At least I will be able to go to big shopping centers and more importantly work whatever the vaccine type.
In France the authorities have decided it has to be an mRNA type anyway (as for the initial 2 shot vaccine) so really there’s not the choice here. (This is for under 60’s with comrbidilities for the moment boosters are for over 60’s and this other group that includes me). Same order as for the initial vaccine.
I’m interpreting WHO’s concern being for the poorer nations in particular, which account for 0.6% of the world’s vaccinated. A much faster spreading variant through an unvaccinated population will be devastating, even if in the best cases scenario might mean it is less deadly.
I also interpret it as a veiled “I told you so” over how the poorer nations have been predictably shafted with the vaccine rollout.
The problem with his comments is that the counterfactual, a more even distribution across the world, is likely worse for producing variants unless the total number of vaccines is magically higher. Populations with a 25-50% vaccination rate provide ample room for a large number of cases, plus frequent breakthrough opportunities. That may be a worst case scenario for creating selective pressures to evolve a more dangerous variant.
Everything I have seen suggests that the patent issue with the respect to the mRNA vaccines is not the bottleneck, and the AZ vaccine has been readily available for license all along, yet very few of the countries demanding the mRNA be vacated have taken steps toward producing the AZ vaccine.
Brown is right that with a large unvaccinated global population, we are giving the virus an opportunity to evolve, but I think he is just plain wrong that it is a problem of equity of distribution. We just need more.
Hopefully, with the developed countries having carried out much of the vaccination programmes to date, we will see more countries roll out theirs to a much greater number now.
Not sure. I had my second dose of vaccine over six months ago, and I think they recommend a booster now, so the booster, to my mind, would be based on what has already been in play.
If Omicron changes that, and a more specific vaccine develops in light of it, I’m sure in due course I’ll get that too.
Yes, that’s been fairly clear for a while now but I’ve yet to see any data on going mRNA to AZ/Janssen. All the data I’ve seen shows strengthened immune response the other way around but I wonder if the sequence is important here?
I’m happy to mix but would prefer some data on going Moderna to AZ. Moderna to Pfizer seems good but I’d like to know if Moderna to AZ would potentially be better and what the side effects may be.
Both tested negative pre departure, only she tested positive on arrival at Schiphol but has since returned 2 negative pcr and 2 lateral flow tests. It sounds like she gave a false-positive but the authorities are refusing to acknowledge they may have screwed up
