In December 2021?
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Two important points - the woman in charge of the Oxford University vaccine development has cautioned that any vaccine may be less effective among “older people” (most of the members here I’d wager); secondly there’ll be a priority list of those being vaccinated with health workers being the first as they’re the most at risk
I agree with everything MFAS and others are posting on the topic of re-opening. I predicted in my June post that Songkran 2021 is the earliest likely date for anyone thinking of holidaying in Thailand
"May be less effective amongst older people" doesn't necessarily mean zero effect, although I suppose it might be. There are older people who have survived Covid with fairly mild symptoms, so their immune system responded well to the actual virus.
Also, once sufficient people are vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, others should see the benefit.
The Oxford vaccine is already supposed to be in volume production, so one would hope there are stocks of it ready for if/when it is improved.
I believe the UK NHS has 500,000 employees. If we pessimistically assume 1 in 5 of them is capable of administering an injection, then it should be possible to inject the rest within a day.
Once it comes to injecting the rest of the population, if they assigned 100,000 to doing the injections and got some support from the army and other bodies for organisation, then each person administering injections has to do 670 people. At 5 minutes per person, that's about 7 working days to do the entire population. That's the "can do" attitude.
I imagine neither the attitude nor the results will be as positive in practice. The local NHS surgery could not organise a p*ss up in a brewery.
Incidentally, I believe they were signing up people in the 18~55 year old range for the phase 3 trial. I've no idea what that means for people over 55, but thought they were going to run additional trials. I haven't noticed that on the trials website.
UK infection rates aren't really high enough to prove the vaccine at present, as Prof Gilbert suggested. Approximately 5000 got the vaccine in the phase 3 trial (& 5000 got the Placebo). The number of people catching Covid is in the ballpark of 1 in 5000 per week, so on average, perhaps one person with the vaccine will be exposed per week. Thankfully they had the good sense to arrange trials in Brazil & South Africa, which should be more useful. I believe a trial will take place in India.
My guess is that UK residents towards the upper end of the 18~55 year old range would get the vaccine fairly quickly after approval.
Wuhan tested 11 million people in 10 days. The test takes longer than an injection. Once ready this vaccine will be administered with phenomenal speed. I'm still expecting to be able to go to Thailand in December though I accept this is less likely for those who reside in the west.