So, coronavirus...

[Saint]

ONS reporting that we have hit 150,000+deaths. I thought that the figure was actually higher?

A total of 151,313 deaths have now occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the ONS said. I thought that figure had been hit some weeks back?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/202 ... is-shows

There's now three measures of deaths kicking around

1 - Deaths within 28 days of a positive test - 127,100 yesterday
2 - Deaths with Covid on the death cert (ONS MeEasurement) - 149,968 yesterday
3 - Excess deaths during the pandemic. No idea on the current number but could easily believe we passed 150K a while back

The ONS public measurement runs quite a few weeks behind. So what the Guardian was doing was fairly crude, taking the ONS measurement at the time then adding on other sources that had been published since the ONS date. What's published now is the official ONS measurement

[Saint]

Seems the anti-body test isn't much cop:

Getting an antibody test
Antibody tests are not widely available yet.

Free antibody tests are currently only available for certain people who work in primary care, social care or education.

These tests are to help the NHS and scientists learn more about who has already had the virus and how it has spread in the UK.

It's not known if having antibodies stops you getting the virus again.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavir ... ronavirus/

What were you expecting them to show? We already know you can be immune without having detectable antibodies. We can't say for sure that having antibodies means you can't be infected (especially if your antibodies are as a result of infection rather than vaccination).

As it says, it's of use to detect the spread of the virus across a population, not at an individual level to prove immunity

[GogLais]

There was an interesting article in the New Scientist a couple of weeks ago about immune systems - well interesting in as far as I understood it. Basically about innate and adaptive immunity to viruses. Isn’t there something about things like flu and shingles jabs boosting the innate immune system? One research team found significantly less Covid in flu vaccinated people. If anything good has come out of this it’s the increased knowledge that’s been acquired.

[tabascoboy]

45's and over can now book in my area - but the nearest vaccination centre is more than 12 miles away at the moment. Hopefully the local vaccination centre and the secondary one both in town that I was able to use re-opens soon.

[SaintK]

ONS reporting that we have hit 150,000+deaths. I thought that the figure was actually higher?

A total of 151,313 deaths have now occurred in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the ONS said. I thought that figure had been hit some weeks back?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/202 ... is-shows

There's now three measures of deaths kicking around

1 - Deaths within 28 days of a positive test - 127,100 yesterday
2 - Deaths with Covid on the death cert (ONS MeEasurement) - 149,968 yesterday
3 - Excess deaths during the pandemic. No idea on the current number but could easily believe we passed 150K a while back

The ONS public measurement runs quite a few weeks behind. So what the Guardian was doing was fairly crude, taking the ONS measurement at the time then adding on other sources that had been published since the ONS date. What's published now is the official ONS measurement

Thanks for clarifying

[tc27]

US pausing J&J vaccine rollout over bloodclot concerns.

Interestingly J&J is another adenovirus vaccine.

[Sandstorm]

US pausing J&J vaccine rollout over bloodclot concerns.

Interestingly J&J is another adenovirus vaccine.

Issue 2 x Aspirins with each jab. Unless there's no money in Aspirin any more?

[TheNatalShark]

Edit: ^^^see above!^^^^

Sigh. US fear mongering now as well and ignoring the evidence, potentially giving into Biden's anti-Flemish/Walloonian rhetoric

Hopefully sharpishly conclude much ado about nothing, or little, and continue their fantastic rollout unabated. Or the article is entirely incorrect and FDA rolls on.

Few factual errors in the article, eg EMA did not conclude causal link. Pretty bad error I think we can agree. Also thought FDA agreed with Pfizer review that it's vaccine could be distributed in -20C chains rather than -70C, though not sure if that followed through into the actual distribution channels yet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/p ... NkjtHukwHQ

[Sandstorm]

Edit: ^^^see above!^^^^

Sigh. US fear mongering now as well and ignoring the evidence, potentially giving into Biden's anti-Flemish/Walloonian rhetoric

Hopefully sharpishly conclude much ado about nothing, or little, and continue their fantastic rollout unabated. Or the article is entirely incorrect and FDA rolls on.

Few factual errors in the article, eg EMA did not conclude causal link. Pretty bad error I think we can agree. Also thought FDA agreed with Pfizer review that it's vaccine could be distributed in -20C chains rather than -70C, though not sure if that followed through into the actual distribution channels yet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/p ... NkjtHukwHQ

All six recipients were women between the ages of 18 and 48.

I called it weeks ago! Stop giving adenovirus jabs to chicks!

[Calculon]

US pausing J&J vaccine rollout over bloodclot concerns.

Interestingly J&J is another adenovirus vaccine.

Got a link? I read that some sites temporarily paused vaccination but resumed after they realised that the adverse reactions were just normal side effects of the vaccine

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opin ... owns-68655

[tabascoboy]

The only thing I see is that there are "calls for a pause" - unless events have overtaken the article

US health authorities are calling for a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, after reports of extremely rare blood clotting cases.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was acting "out of an abundance of caution".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56733715

[Calculon]

hopefully only a temporary pause if they do go ahead with it

[eldanielfire]

Bad (if unsurprising) news - the director of the Chinese CDC publicly admitted today that the Chinese vaccines "aren't very good". A recent study of Sinovac vaccine as delivered in Chile shows just 3% efficacy after a single dose, and 56% after a second dose. There's no similar stufy yet on Sinopharm - China are claiming 76% after two doses but that now seems unlikely

Later, the poor man tried to walk back his remarks (doubtless after at least one arm had been broken)

For reference, Sinovac accounts for almost 90% of all vaccine delivered in Chile, and while 56% is definitely better than nothing, we need to get volumes of the higher efficacy vaccines up rapidly

That probably explains why Chile's vaccination rate, which is second only to Israel, appears to be having a negligible effect on its case and death rates.

Indeed.

[tabascoboy]

Bit confusing as this tweet states that there is a pause so maybe that happened overnight.

[Raggs]

From what I've read there's a press conference type thing in the morning (USA morning), so I guess we'll know then.

[Calculon]

Bit confusing as this tweet states that there is a pause so maybe that happened overnight.

? "will pause" so will happen but hasn't yet

[tabascoboy]

Bit confusing as this tweet states that there is a pause so maybe that happened overnight.

? "will pause" so will happen but hasn't yet

24 hours ago though it was just a "recommendation" so it has apparently stepped up a notch to an intention to pause

[Biffer]

Now officially open to 45 and over, so Group 10 has been split in half

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavir ... ccination/

Site is struggling under load but continued in the same place when refreshed.

I put my work post code in, got an appointment for tomorrow @ Guy's hospital vaccination centre - 10 minute walk from the office

Very good. Any idea where we are in Scotland Biffer, dpedin? Anxiously waiting for my letter before we head down south in a couple of weeks.

Well, they've just announcd they're lifting the travel restrictions early, from this weekend, and we're allowed to meet up in groups of 6 from up to 6 households. So it seems everything is moving in the right direction.

Edinburgh Festival (the International one i.e. the classical music) is setting up outdoor venues to put live shows on this year.

[TheNatalShark]

Scotland vaccines by type. Thought Scotgov got slap on the wrist for releasing the order schedules so surprised this data is being released, but apparently so everyday at 14:00.

Presume the rest of UK data could be materially extapolated from this from further below link.



Data: https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/c ... ffe6bca13a

[Saint]

So J&J officially on hold in the US, and have now decided to delay rollout in Europe.

In the US, 6.8 million have received the jab, 6 have had a blood clot, 1 has died. WHO are "monitoring" the situation

[Calculon]

To late to order some of the Chinese vaccines?

[Sandstorm]

So J&J officially on hold in the US, and have now decided to delay rollout in Europe.

In the US, 6.8 million have received the jab, 6 have had a blood clot, 1 has died. WHO are "monitoring" the situation

Awesome. Another highly effective vaccine goes onto the "tin-hat fear bonfire" and will mean thousands more die globally each week for nothing!

[BnM]

So was the Barnard Castle thing about GSK contract or not?

I've been trying to find out more about UK, what we've got in the pipeline, did we give £20m to Halix via Jenner, what is a production capacity now and going forward but the govt is very cagey.

[Ovals]

To late to order some of the Chinese vaccines?

Does it work ?

[laurent]

To late to order some of the Chinese vaccines?

Does it work ?

As well as Lions knockoffs apparently :

[Saint]

So was the Barnard Castle thing about GSK contract or not?

I've been trying to find out more about UK, what we've got in the pipeline, did we give £20m to Halix via Jenner, what is a production capacity now and going forward but the govt is very cagey.

What we have in the pipeline is very clear - our purchase volumes of Pfizer, AZ, Moderna, Valneva, Novovax, J&J, GSK-Sanofi, and GSK-Curevac are published

What production we have in the UK for AZ is less than clear. I have seen a couple of references that of the two substance production factories, only one is actually manufacturing (Oxford Biologica) but can't see any confirmation. A further facility should be coming online in the summer at Harwell (VMIC). You can infer that we're manufacturing between 1.5 million and 2.5 million doses from other data

Novovax has published Phase III, but doesn't appear to have submitted to MHRA for approval, possibly because they were waiting to secure fill & finish with MHRA (you don't just approve the vaccine, you approve the manufacturing plants for QC purposes). There are rumours of end of April possibly for approval, and manufacturing has supposedly been ongoing for a while Valneva manufacturing in Scotland is being subsidised by the UK Gov, but isn't expected to complete Phase III till Q3/Q4 this year. The Curevac is contracted to be made in the UK, but no idea where (other than a GSK facility somewhere) - it' an mRNA vaccine so new tech for the UK.

For the imports, we have Pfizer coming in from the EU at a rate of 1-2 million doses a week maybe (closer to 1 million I think). Moderna is still in small deliveries from Switzerland with a ramp up due over the next couple of weeks. J&J is not approved yet, manufactured in the Netherlands. The status of GSK-Sanofi is up in the air after the data from it's first Phase II trials weren't good - there's a new trial running.

What we did or didn't do with Halix is also unclear. What is fact - Halix made most of the Phase III trial vaccine for the UK/Brazil/wherever else Phase III trial. The process used for that was shown not to scale, so a new process was developed which does scale and is in use today. The claim is that £21 million was invested into Halix starting in April last year, and at least some of that money was used for re-purposing the plant for the revamped process. The EU say that they have been told by Halix that no money was received from the UK gov - but that may or may not be sidestepping the truth, as the money would have come via Oxford/Jenner, not a direct UK government investment.

What is know for certain is that in December a team from the UK (VMIC, Oxford, and AZ) travelled to Halix to work out why the production volumes weren't as expected and bring them up to scale, presumably on the understanding that at least some production would make it's way across the channel

[Calculon]

To late to order some of the Chinese vaccines?

Does it work ?

Well… I was joking and they don’t have approval where I live, but, yeah, probably.

Chile are soon going to release a couple of studies on their use of sinovac, at least one study will compare the efficacy of Sinovac to the Pfizer vaccine which they also use. Could be very interesting data. Generally, the mRNa vaccines are thought to have high efficacies, but afaik they haven’t really been tested on the more contagious p1 variant found in Chile and especially found in Brazil. Of course, it is not only the efficacy that counts but also availability, price and storage requirements – and the public’s perception of potential side effects like the blood clots. I believe Brazil will also soon publish a study on the efficacy of Sinovac in their vaccination efforts, and this time in a comparison with the AZ which is also being administered there. More interesting data.

Sinopharm is the most widely used vaccine in the wealthy UAE, and they are going to start producing that vaccine quite soon. Make of that what you will. UAE are something like second , only behind Israel, when it comes to doses administered per capita.

Sinovac has had some widely variable efficacy rates between different trails, that’s just the nature of these trails, where there are different variables, not least amongst them the different coronavirus variants - and it is not the only vaccine that this has happened too. And then you get headlines like this:

Bad (if unsurprising) news - the director of the Chinese CDC publicly admitted today that the Chinese vaccines "aren't very good".

Unlikely that the director of the Chinese CDC actually said "aren't very good", even if that is his opinion. Most likely he would have spoken about the variable efficacy in different trails, the need to develop new vaccines to combat new variants, the apparent higher efficacy of mrna vaccines and how important it is for China to spend more money on developing mrna vaccine technology. But that got distilled into "aren't very good".

As I have said before the apparent need some people have to discredit other countries vaccines (whether AZ, sputnik or the Chineses one) based on stupid media headlines and media articles written by scientific illiterate journalist is quite sad and potentially harmful - even if these people defend “their countries”, or some of the other vaccines. We should all be grateful that there appears to be many different vaccines that work and that were all developed, tested, and trailed in a remarkably short time. So in brief, at the moment they appear to work well enough and shortly we should have much more data from Chile and Brazil.

[Marylandolorian]

To late to order some of the Chinese vaccines?

Does it work ?

As well as Lions knockoffs apparently :

Or Rhino’s horn .

[BnM]

So was the Barnard Castle thing about GSK contract or not?

I've been trying to find out more about UK, what we've got in the pipeline, did we give £20m to Halix via Jenner, what is a production capacity now and going forward but the govt is very cagey.

What we have in the pipeline is very clear - our purchase volumes of Pfizer, AZ, Moderna, Valneva, Novovax, J&J, GSK-Sanofi, and GSK-Curevac are published

What production we have in the UK for AZ is less than clear. I have seen a couple of references that of the two substance production factories, only one is actually manufacturing (Oxford Biologica) but can't see any confirmation. A further facility should be coming online in the summer at Harwell (VMIC). You can infer that we're manufacturing between 1.5 million and 2.5 million doses from other data

Novovax has published Phase III, but doesn't appear to have submitted to MHRA for approval, possibly because they were waiting to secure fill & finish with MHRA (you don't just approve the vaccine, you approve the manufacturing plants for QC purposes). There are rumours of end of April possibly for approval, and manufacturing has supposedly been ongoing for a while Valneva manufacturing in Scotland is being subsidised by the UK Gov, but isn't expected to complete Phase III till Q3/Q4 this year. The Curevac is contracted to be made in the UK, but no idea where (other than a GSK facility somewhere) - it' an mRNA vaccine so new tech for the UK.

For the imports, we have Pfizer coming in from the EU at a rate of 1-2 million doses a week maybe (closer to 1 million I think). Moderna is still in small deliveries from Switzerland with a ramp up due over the next couple of weeks. J&J is not approved yet, manufactured in the Netherlands. The status of GSK-Sanofi is up in the air after the data from it's first Phase II trials weren't good - there's a new trial running.

What we did or didn't do with Halix is also unclear. What is fact - Halix made most of the Phase III trial vaccine for the UK/Brazil/wherever else Phase III trial. The process used for that was shown not to scale, so a new process was developed which does scale and is in use today. The claim is that £21 million was invested into Halix starting in April last year, and at least some of that money was used for re-purposing the plant for the revamped process. The EU say that they have been told by Halix that no money was received from the UK gov - but that may or may not be sidestepping the truth, as the money would have come via Oxford/Jenner, not a direct UK government investment.

What is know for certain is that in December a team from the UK (VMIC, Oxford, and AZ) travelled to Halix to work out why the production volumes weren't as expected and bring them up to scale, presumably on the understanding that at least some production would make it's way across the channel

Thanks, any idea of what we have received so far from AZ? Looking at some tables yesterday doesn't seem to be more than 30m but I've no idea what we were forecast to receive. Specifics a very hard to find. This has to be on purpose, we had a plan b with GSK, is there more plan b to come. India's figures are not looking good so further vaccines from their could be an issue as for the EU we're just letting them accuse us of stealing their vaccines and that we should be grateful for anything we get. I think Breton was telling porkies but to what extent?

[Saint]

The exact quote from the Chinese CDC Director was "Chinese vaccines don't have high protection rates". for what it's worth

[Saint]

So was the Barnard Castle thing about GSK contract or not?

I've been trying to find out more about UK, what we've got in the pipeline, did we give £20m to Halix via Jenner, what is a production capacity now and going forward but the govt is very cagey.

What we have in the pipeline is very clear - our purchase volumes of Pfizer, AZ, Moderna, Valneva, Novovax, J&J, GSK-Sanofi, and GSK-Curevac are published

What production we have in the UK for AZ is less than clear. I have seen a couple of references that of the two substance production factories, only one is actually manufacturing (Oxford Biologica) but can't see any confirmation. A further facility should be coming online in the summer at Harwell (VMIC). You can infer that we're manufacturing between 1.5 million and 2.5 million doses from other data

Novovax has published Phase III, but doesn't appear to have submitted to MHRA for approval, possibly because they were waiting to secure fill & finish with MHRA (you don't just approve the vaccine, you approve the manufacturing plants for QC purposes). There are rumours of end of April possibly for approval, and manufacturing has supposedly been ongoing for a while Valneva manufacturing in Scotland is being subsidised by the UK Gov, but isn't expected to complete Phase III till Q3/Q4 this year. The Curevac is contracted to be made in the UK, but no idea where (other than a GSK facility somewhere) - it' an mRNA vaccine so new tech for the UK.

For the imports, we have Pfizer coming in from the EU at a rate of 1-2 million doses a week maybe (closer to 1 million I think). Moderna is still in small deliveries from Switzerland with a ramp up due over the next couple of weeks. J&J is not approved yet, manufactured in the Netherlands. The status of GSK-Sanofi is up in the air after the data from it's first Phase II trials weren't good - there's a new trial running.

What we did or didn't do with Halix is also unclear. What is fact - Halix made most of the Phase III trial vaccine for the UK/Brazil/wherever else Phase III trial. The process used for that was shown not to scale, so a new process was developed which does scale and is in use today. The claim is that £21 million was invested into Halix starting in April last year, and at least some of that money was used for re-purposing the plant for the revamped process. The EU say that they have been told by Halix that no money was received from the UK gov - but that may or may not be sidestepping the truth, as the money would have come via Oxford/Jenner, not a direct UK government investment.

What is know for certain is that in December a team from the UK (VMIC, Oxford, and AZ) travelled to Halix to work out why the production volumes weren't as expected and bring them up to scale, presumably on the understanding that at least some production would make it's way across the channel

Thanks, any idea of what we have received so far from AZ? Looking at some tables yesterday doesn't seem to be more than 30m but I've no idea what we were forecast to receive. Specifics a very hard to find. This has to be on purpose, we had a plan b with GSK, is there more plan b to come. India's figures are not looking good so further vaccines from their could be an issue as for the EU we're just letting them accuse us of stealing their vaccines and that we should be grateful for anything we get. I think Breton was telling porkies but to what extent?

As of the latest update for yesterday, the UK has administered 40 million + change doses. We can make a semi-educated guess that somewhere between 12 million and 15 million of those are Pfizer based on all the rhetoric that was kicking around again last motnh about EU to UK vaccine exports. So the remaining 25 million or so are from AZ, of which 20 million will have been manufactured in the UK (5 million from India) and a million or so from the EU in the early days (although not from factories currently producing - they were the original production method using spare capacity in the AZ contracted network). On top of that, it looks like a further 700K of UK produced AZ has gone to Australia, and around 500K doses to British Overseas Territories.

The "Original" plan was that we would have an AZ stockpile of 30 million doses by Christmas with an expected 3-4 million doses manufactured per week. That went out the window when it became apparent that the original process wouldn't scale. Even the new scale process is not working efficiently, except in Halix (now) by all accounts, and India, where they're actually on track to significantly over produce this year - although they're now in trouble with their own infection rate.

As you say, specifics are VERY hard to find and it's obviously deliberate; it looks like the UK gov anticipated vaccine wars and other than the headline figures didn't want to give other countries much ammunition

[BnM]

So most of what we received from EU factories was Pfizer not AZ. We've received less than 2 days worth from the EU of AZ up till 3rd week March. They've been screaming bloody murder over 1m or so vaccines.

[Saint]

I don't think the EU have really been trying to argue that they just want 1 million AZ doses from the UK. They want "their fair share" from the UK. They haven't really put a number to what that might be

[laurent]

I don't think the EU have really been trying to argue that they just want 1 million AZ doses from the UK. They want "their fair share" from the UK. They haven't really put a number to what that might be

The EU was screaming about wanting the doses in the contract... (4 times as many as AZ provided more or less I believe).

At any rate 20% (12M) of French adult pop with at least 1 jab with nearly 4M on 2 300k+ shots yesterday.

Main issue is Jansen halted right when doses should have started this vaccine was going to have a positive impact on vaccination numbers :(
they had made vaccination eligibility earlier for 55 years old 1 week bump which is now not really useful as deliveries of Jansen are screwed and confidence will drop.

Brasilian flight halted (seriously should have been done a long while ago).
the Brasilian and SA variant are 4% overall the English one 77%

France is passing 100 000 death this week :(

[Saint]

I don't think the EU have really been trying to argue that they just want 1 million AZ doses from the UK. They want "their fair share" from the UK. They haven't really put a number to what that might be

The EU was screaming about wanting the doses in the contract... (4 times as many as AZ provided more or less I believe).

At any rate 20% (12M) of French adult pop with at least 1 jab with nearly 4M on 2 300k+ shots yesterday.

Main issue is Jansen halted right when doses should have started this vaccine was going to have a positive impact on vaccination numbers :(
they had made vaccination eligibility earlier for 55 years old 1 week bump which is now not really useful as deliveries of Jansen are screwed and confidence will drop.

Brasilian flight halted (seriously should have been done a long while ago).
the Brasilian and SA variant are 4% overall the English one 77%

France is passing 100 000 death this week :(

They're talking about doses in the contract, but tbf there is at least some recognition that they need to at least share them with the UK. The repeated argument from Ursula is that the EU has exported circa 40 million doses of vaccine (any vendor) globally with "over 10 million" to the UK, but the UK has exported none to the EU, and they want reciprocity and their "fair share".

Anyway, the sad truth is that everyone's looked at the AZ projected range of production and assumed it would be at the top end; excpet for Halix and Inida it's closer to the bottom end

[BnM]

AstraZeneca confirmed the UK had not received any vaccines or components from the EU - apart from one "tiny" batch from the Leiden plant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56483766

As far as I'm aware AZ didn't meet their contract obligation to the UK either due to having the same scaling up issues. Though because we pressed the button earlier this has been at least partially resolved??????

[BnM]

Also as we don't manufacture or finish Pfizer what would be the point of the EU sending us 9m Pfizer and demanding 9m AZ in return. It's interesting the Pfizer contracts haven't been questioned once AFAICS

[Saint]

AstraZeneca confirmed the UK had not received any vaccines or components from the EU - apart from one "tiny" batch from the Leiden plant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56483766

As far as I'm aware AZ didn't meet their contract obligation to the UK either due to having the same scaling up issues. Though because we pressed the button earlier this has been at least partially resolved??????

Nope, we're at least 50% below expectation in the UK (and short by 30 million initial doses). Pressing the button earlier has meant that we reached that under-expectation issue sooner, but we've not really been able to move past that. The only fix in the UK will be when Harwell opens allowing us to bring additional equipment online, but realistically Harwell is more of a long term future play for the UK than a realistic answer to the immediate crisis - by the time it's available the immediate UK requirement should be dealt with, although it will enable us to increase our future export capability for Covax efforts significantly.

[Saint]

Also as we don't manufacture or finish Pfizer what would be the point of the EU sending us 9m Pfizer and demanding 9m AZ in return. It's interesting the Pfizer contracts haven't been questioned once AFAICS

Well, that's never really been explained. But Pfizer themselves have pointed out to the EU that if the EU blocks exports to the UK then the UK's natural reaction might be to shit down component export to Pfizer. The thing about mRNA vaccines is that they;re close to being synthetic (predictable) production process rather than a biological (unpredictable) process, but for the moment at least they require complex supply chains involving many countries, unless you're the size of the US. Curevac mRNA when it comes online will be an mRNA completely manufactured in the UK AFAIK.

[dpedin]

Now officially open to 45 and over, so Group 10 has been split in half

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavir ... ccination/

Site is struggling under load but continued in the same place when refreshed.

I put my work post code in, got an appointment for tomorrow @ Guy's hospital vaccination centre - 10 minute walk from the office

Very good. Any idea where we are in Scotland Biffer, dpedin? Anxiously waiting for my letter before we head down south in a couple of weeks.

Slick - here you go! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56734397