This is the news of the last few days.
The most serious information is from the NHS. One of the advantages of a national health system is rapid access to data from the system. The NHS say that one in 5 patients who were hospitalized with Covi-19 are readmitted within five months, and one in 8 of those readmitted die. It seems the most prevalent reason is cardiovascular complications.
I find this very ominous. This has been a great worry of Dr Fauci's as Covid-19 is at its very essence a vascular infection. This makes it all the more urgent to get on with vaccinations.
Like the US, the UK are finding vaccine production to be the limiting factor. The Oxford vaccine seems to be coming off the production line at pace now. It can be distributed much faster then the Pfizer vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine seems to have slowed production here and in Europe. As far as I can tell there is no clear reason why.
I would say that I think the Oxford Astra/Zeneka vaccine should get approval now in the US. The results of the UK regulator should be accepted. Millions of doses have now been given in the UK with no incidents at all. The mRNA vaccines cause more reactions, and also allergic reactions. Not enough to stop vaccinations. However they have halted vaccinations in California with a batch of the Moderna vaccine due to an excess number of allergic reactions. The fact that injecting large doses of mRNA would cause significant reaction was predicted even before trials. However the reaction is not nearly as bad as getting Covid-19.
The Oxford group are worried enough about the new E484K mutant in Brazil they are doing an edit for it, so they are ready to go if required. The UK has now immunixed 50% of its population over 80. They have immunized 5% of the population. The draconian restrictions are reducing the case incidents, but hospitalizations and deaths are still increasing, but hopefully will fall in a couple of weeks.
One interesting facet of the vaccination campaign is the use of the old medieval cathedrals as vaccination centers. There layout makes them ideal. There is nothing new under the son. Most of these cathedrals were actually designed to be handicapped accessible hundreds of years ago to receive the sick. They do not have stairs going up into them and their entry ways are on grade! The first to be used was Lichfield, and then Salisbury, as of yesterday Blackburn was opened.
Yesterday, the vaccinations were highlighted in Salisbury on the evening news. Everything was orderly and optimism high among those interviewed. Their glorious Willis organ was playing as people were being vaccinated. Salisbury has one of the very finest Willis organs.
One fact came to light yesterday. The UK have been building a novel vaccine plant in Oxford associated with the Jenner Institute. It should come on line later this year.
The government said this pandemic came a year too soon. This production center was designed to rapidly get vaccines into production within four months of a new virus like Covid-19 emerging. It is designed for novel vaccine platforms including mRNA and mDNA platforms. It will have a production capability of 70 million doses of vaccine per year. That is enough to vaccinate the whole UK population. Here is a picture of the facility.
They say they will assist all manufacturers of vaccines with development and especially edits.
So the idea is to have information sent back by virus hunters around the globe, and if one looks dangerous like happened in Wuhan, work would start on the vaccine immediately and have it ready to roll out within four months.
It seems clear to the UK government that you can not go through lengthy phase one, two and three trials in a serious pandemic like we have experienced. From now on vaccines need to be approved by system. So if a dangerous virus emerges a new vaccine will be designed right away. The Oxford vaccine was designed in 48 hours after they had the genome. As soon as a vaccine is known to produce an antibody and T-cell response to the offending virus, plans for production will start immediately and studies will be done as part of the roll out. It is judged that this will be a lower risk approach and save more lives than letting a virus rip for a year while studies are done, to say nothing of the devastating effect on the world economy and people's mental health.
This is certainly a bold concept and I wonder what members think about it.
