vaccination progress

[10tazione]

 

[fedssocr]

that's interesting. Bhutan made a lot of news over having done some big number of shots, so it's odd that no one is fully vaccinated. It also seems odd that no one on Taiwan has been vaccinated. 

I think the number I heard from Thailand was 1.5m shots so far

[10tazione]

As for Bhutan, i think the first shots where end of march / beginning of april. That may explain why there weren't any second shots yet. There are virologists who say under vaccine shortage it would anyway be wiser to first vaccinate everyone once.

No idea about Taiwan though.

Somehow I feel sorry for the Australians and other countries who did a great job in controlling the virus and now don't get any vaccines because other countries keep them for themselves as the situation in Australia is not that urgent ... quite unfair to punish the good ones.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, 10tazione said:

Somehow I feel sorry for the Australians and other countries who did a great job in controlling the virus and now don't get any vaccines because other countries keep them for themselves as the situation in Australia is not that urgent ... quite unfair to punish the good ones.

To get vaccines early, countries need to sign contracts and commit the money early.

As an example, many of the vaccines the UK has deployed only actually existed because the UK government signed binding contracts and provided money, so the suppliers could prepare production.   Now if those vaccines only exist because we have ordered for them, with funding, it's only fair that we get to use them.

Also the Astra Zeneca vaccine has been licensed out to many other countries, including India, Australia & Thailand.  So Australia should be in a good position soon.

https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2021/03/22/Australia-s-TGA-approves-CSL-manufacture-of-AstraZeneca-COVID-19-vaccine

[anddy]

I don't get that the Seychelles are only at 60+% vaccinated. I just tread yesterday in the context of a new surge of infections there that they (a) started vaccinating in January, so VERY early, and (b) that their population is 100,000. Small country with limited resources or not, getting 100k people (=200k doses) done is not that much

[spoon]

The many vaccine they got is actually donated by UAE to the country. Since then, they also receive some vaccine from covax (3%  of population only). Im not sure if the gov themselves have procure their own vaccine yet or not. Apparently, egen at 62% vaccinated, they are now experience a surge in new cases.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-04/world-s-most-vaccinated-nation-reintroduces-curbs-as-cases-surge

 

1 hour ago, anddy said:

I don't get that the Seychelles are only at 60+% vaccinated. I just tread yesterday in the context of a new surge of infections there that they (a) started vaccinating in January, so VERY early, and (b) that their population is 100,000. Small country with limited resources or not, getting 100k people (=200k doses) done is not that much

 

[Guest]

An early assumption on vaccination rates for herd immunity was very roughly, well over 75% vaccinated or with natural antibodies.

60% vaccinated falls short of herd immunity, even before we adjust for vaccine efficacy.     Most of those had the Sinopharm vaccine, which has itself been questioned.

So should we even expect this vaccine rate to stop infections ?

 

Of course, if they have prioritized the more vulnerable citizens, perhaps it ought to reduce the death rate to a very low level.   I suspect it's too early to judge results from the current outbreak, but according to Worldmeters, the Seychelles has reported no deaths at all so far in May.  

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/seychelles/

 

At present, this is not a reason to question the effectiveness of global vaccine programmes.    

Data from countries like Israel and the UK generally shows the vaccines are very effective to date.     Neither country uses Sinopharm.

 

[anddy]

My point wasn't if they have reached herd immunity level or to question the effectiveness of vaccination programmes, I was only wondering why they haven't achieved 100% vaccination rate yet. Since all vaccines were donated, were the numbers of doses not enough and they ran out? Sounds implausible at only 200k doses they require. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, anddy said:

My point wasn't if they have reached herd immunity level or to question the effectiveness of vaccination programmes, I was only wondering why they haven't achieved 100% vaccination rate yet. Since all vaccines were donated, were the numbers of doses not enough and they ran out? Sounds implausible at only 200k doses they require. 

That's a fair question, but I was replying to Spoon's comments in this instance.     Next time I will quote it.

I agree that stopping @ 62% seems a little odd.    Who knows why ?   Perhaps they only had supply for that proportion of the population ?    

Even an organization donating vaccines is possibly going to do more good giving a couple of countries enough for just the high risk people, than giving one country enough for 100% of the population.

[billyhouston]

13 hours ago, 10tazione said:

Somehow I feel sorry for the Australians and other countries who did a great job in controlling the virus and now don't get any vaccines because other countries keep them for themselves as the situation in Australia is not that urgent ... quite unfair to punish the good ones.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 717,000 AstraZeneca doses were dispatched in late February and March from the company's British operations - also during a period when the EU was demanding the vaccine from the UK. 

This followed the EU's refusal to allow the export of 250,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from Italy to Australia.

The UK helps its friends.

 

 

[fedssocr]

seems like a rich country like Australia should be able to manufacture the vaccine locally. Maybe it's an IP issue?

Saw some news today that Taiwan is seeing an uptick of cases with almost no one vaccinated. They're another rich country that you would expect could access vaccines. 

S. Korea having some struggles too

[Alsfca]

11 hours ago, z909 said:

I agree that stopping @ 62% seems a little odd.    Who knows why ?   Perhaps they only had supply for that proportion of the population ?   

The vaccines are approved for adults only (pfizer/biotech just got approved for children up to 12 in the US).  So the 38% not yet vaccinated are probably teenagers and children.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, fedssocr said:

seems like a rich country like Australia should be able to manufacture the vaccine locally. Maybe it's an IP issue?

As has been mentioned, the Astra Zeneca vaccine is licensed out to many countries, including Australia.   It looks like they just haven't finished the production process yet.

https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2021/03/22/Australia-s-TGA-approves-CSL-manufacture-of-AstraZeneca-COVID-19-vaccine

 

3 hours ago, Alsfca said:

The vaccines are approved for adults only (pfizer/biotech just got approved for children up to 12 in the US).  So the 38% not yet vaccinated are probably teenagers and children.

A good point, which explains some of the 38%, but probably not all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Seychelles#/media/File:Seychelles_single_age_population_pyramid_2020.png

[TMax]

CSL in Melbourne Victoria are producing the Astrazeneca vaccine and have hit their target production of 1mil doses a week, unfortunately the slowness of vaccinations is being put down to the federal government running the vaccination program rather than having the states run it like they do with other vaccines. And every batch must be quality tested before it can be released and that process takes about 4 weeks to complete (see below). Originally the federal government wasn't in a rush due to the low infection rates here and because they decided to wait a little bit longer they could see if there were any issues arising from the various vaccines used elsewhere in the world. Vaccination rates are now increasing in Australia as the states have now set up mass vaccination centres and the supply of the vaccine is increasing. Once CSL have completed the Astrazeneca production contract (I think 50mil doses) they will start to produce the Novavax vaccine which is another 50mil doses, CSL only has the capacity to produce one type of vaccine at a time and they are our main vaccine manufacturer. We are also donating vaccines to other countries as part of their Covax agreement. 

Quote

Melbourne, Australia: CSL can confirm that production of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for Australia has reached more than a million doses a week - these volumes have been produced for a number of weeks and are due to be released into the community from mid-late May following required quality checks.

To date, more than 3.7 million COVID-19 vaccines have been released from CSL and Seqirus’ Australian manufacturing facilities. 

To ensure that the vaccines meet the required quality standards there is approximately a four week quality control and approval process from the time vials are filled, involving a series of stringent tests conducted on each batch and undertaken by CSL, AstraZeneca and the TGA

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, TMax said:

Once CSL have completed the Astrazeneca production contract (I think 50mil doses) they will start to produce the Novavax vaccine which is another 50mil doses

That got my interest, as the UK has a contract for 60 million doses of Novavax, with  UK production & bottling (which would prevent interference from unelected entities overseas).  

I was aware of trial results published in January, but have heard nothing about approval in the UK or any other country.

Having googled it, I found this report of delays:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/novavax-shares-sink-after-it-again-delays-timelines-for-seeking-regulatory-approval-for-its-covid-vaccine.html

 

Backing several candidates AND investing early so they can prepare production capacity seems to be the best government strategy.   Then keep quiet about delivery schedules, to avoid interference from countries & entities which have not put money on the line to invest in production.