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RW - Master of the knee-jerk - my reply to Goy was "Goy you commented - 'restrictions are more difficult to impose in a western democracy', I replied, 'well of course'. So I acknowledged that fully. OK now ?" Never mind honesty RW ?

Also, because it's difficult, we can't do it ? ? ? ? Try harder would be my answer -- (you in particular). You don't help.

If you have a view yourself other than being . . . . let's hear it. The problem is worth a discussion.

RW - you show yourself up.

Well done LLass. And I'm sure we'll hear more about that later. Thanks

Observed in 36229 by Goy, "So, the claim is that the AZN doesn't work in the >65s and they haven't yet approved it for use anyway, yet they want MORE."

. . . . . "Greg Clark, a former Business Secretary and the chairman of the Commons science committee, added: "This is no time to be introducing extra bureaucracy into the production or delivery of vaccines. The focus of manufacturers should not be distracted from making as many doses as possible as quickly as possible and getting them into the hands of vaccinators."

A Government spokesman said: "We remain in close contact with all of our vaccine suppliers and scheduled deliveries will fully support vaccination [of over-70s] by Feb 15." The Government said the "bulk" of the AstraZeneca vaccine for the UK was made in Oxfordshire and Staffordshire. However, AZ also has production facilities in Europe, which have been used to supply the UK in the past. EU sources said they wanted to establish whether any vaccines earmarked for the EU had ended up being sent to Britain after it began its vaccination programme first."

This one will run and run - that's for sure. Time to walk the dog . . .

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/25/brussels-threatens-block-exports-pfizer-covid-vaccine/

. . . . "Germany's health minister, Jens Spahn, said exports of Covid vaccines should be authorised at EU level before they could leave the bloc, meaning Brussels would have the final say over whether Pfizer jabs could cross the Channel. He said: "We, as the EU, must be able to know whether and what vaccines are being exported from the EU."

The row blew up after AstraZeneca – which developed the vaccine with Oxford University – told the EU last week that it would only be able to deliver 31 million of the 80 million doses that EU countries had been expecting by the end of March.
The company blamed "production problems" caused by work to ramp up long-term production at its factories. But in a phone call with Pascal Soriot, the chief executive, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, demanded that the contract be honoured in full.

The EU, which is finally expected to approve the use of the AstraZeneca jab this week, has been humbled by the slow start to its vaccine rollout, with Britain surging ahead of other European countries.

The AstraZeneca jab has only been found to be eight per cent effective in the over-65s and will not be approved by the European Medicines Agency for use for that age group, according to reports in the German tabloid Bild and Handelsblatt on Monday night, citing unnamed sources. A spokesman for AstraZeneca refuted those claims as "completely incorrect" and said data published in November demonstrated "strong immune responses" in older adults, with 100 per cent of second dose recipients generating "spike-specific antibodies". The UK declined an invitation to be part of an EU-wide procurement process and was able to steal a march on the rest of the world by becoming the first country to approve the Pfizer jab and the first Western nation to begin vaccinating its citizens.

While Britain has administered more than 6.5 million doses, Germany has only administered 1.78 million, the highest number of any EU country. David Jones, the deputy chairman of the Tory European Research Group, told The Telegraph: "Quite clearly they've had a very cumbersome procurement process which has resulted in this. The fact is we were far more astute in our purchasing process.

"Frankly, it seems like a rather childish and spiteful way to behave. This looks awfully like blackmail, which is pretty disreputable and shows why we were right to leave the EU."

The former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "If the EU were to take action unilaterally that restricted supplies of vaccine bought legally and fairly by the UK, it would poison economic relations for a generation. At such a critical moment, the world needs vaccine nationalism like a hole in the head."

. . . . . cont'd

Reflecting the boundless cooperation and goodwill between the EU and the UK, this plot thickens . . . Pfizer were forced to reduce their 'targeted' allocation of vaccine to the EU by 60% ? Here we go !

"Britain's Covid vaccine supply is in jeopardy after the EU threatened to block exports of the Belgian-made Pfizer jabs amid a row with UK-based AstraZeneca. Brussels decided to impose tighter controls on exports after reacting with fury to the news that AstraZeneca will deliver 50 million fewer doses to the EU than it had expected. Ministers now fear deliveries of the Pfizer jabs will – at best – be delayed by extra paperwork and that the EU could try to stop doses being sent to non-EU countries after saying it will "take any action required to protect its citizens".

In March, the bloc imposed export restrictions on personal protective equipment after it struggled with supply to its member states. On Monday night, MPs accused the EU of acting out of "spite" and trying to deflect blame for its own mistakes in getting vaccination programmes off the ground. The EU's health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, summoned AstraZeneca bosses to a series of video meetings on Monday at which she made clear that their explanations for the reduction in doses were unacceptable. Ms Kyriakides said an "export transparency mechanism" would be put in place "as soon as possible", which would mean that "in future all companies producing vaccines against Covid-19 in the EU will have to provide early notification whenever they want to export vaccines to third countries". She also demanded that AstraZeneca produces a list of how many doses it has provided to each country – information both the company and Downing Street have been desperate to keep under wraps. The UK is heavily dependent on the Pfizer vaccine and is expecting almost 3.5 million doses, integral to the Government's target of vaccinating all over-70s by mid-February, to be delivered in the next three weeks. Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, had already warned that meeting that target will be "tight" and that any unforeseen supply issues could blow the chances of doing so off course.

On Saturday, The Telegraph revealed that around half a million fewer doses of Covid vaccine would be delivered to the NHS this week because of supply delays. Speaking at a Downing Street press conference on Monday, Matt Han****, the Health Secretary, hinted at potential supply problems, saying: "The rate-limiting factor to this vaccination programme remains supply. As we know, supply is tight."

So far, Britain has given 6,573,570 people their first vaccine dose, reaching 78.7 per cent of the over-80s.

A total of 40 million Pfizer doses have been ordered – enough to inoculate 20 million people – of which 30 million were due to arrive by the end of May. "

. . . . . cont'd

Thanks for that link again - always good to hear our Prof.

This morning I happened on this - Dr John Campbell - posters here are fairly well 'up' on his stuff but it's a good review anyway IMO. https://youtu.be/Zo2uQvua3JA I don't watch him normally, but it appeared after a particularly depressing report on Sky News this morning from 'The Royal Free Hospital' in London. (C7 this Sky News is NOT for you, TCOY).

The vaccine 'roll out' is going well but with supply limitations here and there, it's going to be a very long battle, remembering that say 5 million people dosed is a 3.7% completion of whole target, (not 7.4%), being only one dose. And the 'disinfectant' factor, (Inan's word), i.e. transmissibility, is as yet largely unknown.

I hope the Govt. continues down it's 'border control' path - the initial efforts were frankly risible, (but better than nothing), as Folks happily paid the GBP 500 fine and carried on to deliver any new variants they'd acquired while abroad. Compulsory quarantine in Airport Hotels for 10/14 days is the only answer until vaccine certificates plus negative test certificates (24 hours) are established as a condition to travel.

Which brings me to another point - whilst the WHO and all of us have real concerns about vaccinating all poorer Nations around the World too, surely, to achieve control Worldwide, the virus and it's mutations have to be conquered Country by Country with ongoing tough border controls. Having partial vaccination levels around the World and ongoing cross spreading via international travel just won't solve the problem. AIMHO.

Isn't it bl**dy wonderful to see Joe Biden pushing wide messaging and a raft of sensible measures out in the USA at last and God knows, they need it. Trump hopefully, is in the process of being consigned to History but I wish we could say the same for this awful pandemic.

I hope you are right on that Ray - more will be revealed in due course.

One for you as an eminent Member of the Science Department https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/health/coronavirus-mutations-B117-variant.html

Thanks for that Bunsie. It's evident there's a long way to go before we will know what our 'new normal' will be. That's awful - to recover from CV-19, maybe have long covid and then a regression. I wonder if vaccinations for the recovered will be able to help that situation ? ATB

While we wait for the 2nd Gen vaccines, hopefully 'Covidity', the J & J vaccine would give the UK's efforts a nice boost!

"The phase 1/2a interim analysis showed that the Company’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate induced an immune response and was generally well-tolerated across all study participants. Data demonstrated that, after a single vaccination, neutralising antibodies against COVID-19 were detected in over 90% of study participants at day 29 and 100% of participants aged 18-55 years at day 57. These neutralising antibodies remained stable through day 71, currently the latest timepoint available in this ongoing study. https://pharmaphorum.com/news/early-data-backs-jjs-single-shot-coronavirus-vaccine-phase-3-results-due-soon/?

Coming back to yours, Dragon. I'm probably catching up, but I thought it would be interesting anyway to summarise all 3 projects in that PDF - ". . . the VTF has provided funding to accelerate and expand the UK’s ability to manufacture a range of vaccines at three sites VMIC (Harwell); CGTC (Braintree); Valneva (Livingston). These sites will now form the core UK vaccine manufacturing capability for the future."

Harwell - “What we didn't want to do was make a facility that would be great for making the AstraZeneca vaccine, for example, but then next year a different MERS [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome] or SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] comes along.” he added. “That's a different type of platform and a different vaccine. So we've got to have a flexible facility that is able to make in an emergency a large amount of doses from different types of processes.” " https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/16/britain-will-able-vaccinate-nation-against-new-covid-strains/

Braintree - "The CGT Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre, due to become fully operational by December 2021, is being developed following a £100m commitment by the Government to support the national effort to manufacture millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine, become an innovation centre for cell and gene therapies supporting the growth of this expanding industry, continue to promote innovation and develop technology transfer expertise for vaccines and large-scale cell and gene therapy manufacture." https://ct.catapult.org.uk/how-we-work/our-facilities/manufacturing-innovation-centre-braintree-uk

Livingston - "Valneva is just ‘days away’ from kick-starting manufacture of its jab on British soil. Britain has secured supply of 60m doses at a cost of €470 million (£418 million). French-headquartered firm’s jab is second-largest Covid jab ordered by Govt. It will furnish Britain with 60 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine." https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9155273/French-drugs-firm-days-away-making-60million-doses-Britains-FOURTH-coronavirus-vaccine.html

IMHO this is highly impressive and just this once - well done the UK Govt ! Three hopefully 'State of the Art' facilities to put the UK at the crest of the vaccine wave ? We'll see.

Thanks LLass - that explains why I couldn't get to that article on the FT website LOL.

Thanks Nom. I've no doubt a massive amount of effort is going into increasing supplies of raw materials too.

Interesting flexibility in this manufacturing facility, VMIC (Harwell) . . . . . . .

"He said the new centre is “technology agnostic”, meaning it can be adapted to different methods for different types of vaccine and viruses.

“What we didn't want to do was make a facility that would be great for making the AstraZeneca vaccine, for example, but then next year a different MERS [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome] or SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] comes along.” he added.

“That's a different type of platform and a different vaccine. So we've got to have a flexible facility that is able to make in an emergency a large amount of doses from different types of processes.” "

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/16/britain-will-able-vaccinate-nation-against-new-covid-strains/

Thanks WTP - couldn't find that in the FT and it's the last day of my one month subscription so I can't look tomorrow! ATB

Hi LLass - can't answer that - Valneva is a French Company now having a manufacturing plant at Livingston, backed by the VTF. I'm sure someone else will know. Wish you a good night's sleep !

Dragon thanks . . . . these are clips from your link : "VTF has supported the UK’s industrial strategy by reinforcing long-term vaccine capability to prepare the UK for future pandemics, helping to place the UK at the forefront of vaccine R&D, manufacturing and distribution, but more is needed. . . . . the VTF has provided funding to accelerate and expand the UK’s ability to manufacture a range of vaccines at three sites VMIC (Harwell); CGTC Braintree; Valneva (Livingston). These sites will now form the core UK vaccine manufacturing capability for the future."

Which connects neatly with this in the DM today : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9155273/French-drugs-firm-days-away-making-60million-doses-Britains-FOURTH-coronavirus-vaccine.html

"Valneva is just ‘days away’ from kick-starting manufacture of its jab on British soil. Britain has secured supply of 60m doses at a cost of €470 million (£418 million). French-headquartered firm’s jab is second-largest Covid jab ordered by Govt. It will furnish Britain with 60 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine – our second largest supply after the Oxford-AstraZeneca injection – but is yet to strike a deal with the EU or its native France. Now French drugs firm Valneva is just ‘days away’ from kick-starting manufacture of its jab on British soil, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. In a major boost for the UK’s vaccination drive, the company’s boss said he hopes Valneva’s Covid jab will be approved and ready to be administered into British arms by the summer or early autumn. Chief executive Thomas Lingelbach said Valneva’s vaccine, which has been produced with financial aid from the UK Government, is about to go into mass production at its plant in Livingston, Scotland."

Me - The Govt. appears to have played a 'blinder' on provision of vaccines so far and let's hope this goes well. Valneva are about to start manufacture but approval of the vaccine is awaited and it will be some time before vaccinations begin, "In a major boost for the UK’s vaccination drive, the company’s boss said he hopes Valneva’s Covid jab will be approved and ready to be administered into British arms by the summer or early autumn."

Good luck Valneva and the UK.

WTP I've seen patches and inhalers mentioned . . .