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Have to admit I have eased off on talking about vaccine safety. In my bubble everyone is just desperate for a vaccine. Thought job done. Reminded it is not. 1/n https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/10/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-us-health-workers
So where are we vaccine-wise now we are in rollout phase?
UK
Data is lagging but apparently ~2 million by weekend
308,541 in week up to 3rd Jan and Matt Hancock says 200,000 a day- on target to hit 13 million by mid Feb. Seems optimistic but possible 2/n
UK
Data is lagging but apparently ~2 million by weekend
308,541 in week up to 3rd Jan and Matt Hancock says 200,000 a day- on target to hit 13 million by mid Feb. Seems optimistic but possible 2/n
AZ ChAdOx remains the dominant ordered vaccine in UK and internationally 3/n
And though we are not knocking it out the park, we are doing OK, thanks largely to sensible quick decisions from regulators. Arguably that extra time has not been effectively used 4/n
.. and that is in part because we only had Pfizer (a pain to distribute and give). I also think there was confusion and inefficiency at the last minute shifting of priority categories. 5/n
So... safety. Having spent a lot of time volubly talking up vaccine safety, this has panned out as expected (thankfully). 24 million doses internationally and no new safety signals yet. Still a lot of time to go but reassuring start. Pfizer may have a slightly higher... 6/n
... anaphylaxis rate than in the trial (in those with previous allergies). Important to know- if it pans out - but not a big problem and still rare. Just needs well managed in programmes. 7/n
And safety-wise that appears to be about it so far. We need to keep watching this though as rarer effects will take 100s of millions to emerge and confirm and mass vaccination with ChAdOx just started. 8/n
So overall a very good start from safety viewpoint but we need to ramp up rapidly in administering. Easy to be complacent about vaccine hesitancy but still needs concerted strong public engagement.
