Originally Posted by
antichef
I am sure that sensible minds will already be turning to injection efficacy in over 65's.
As far as I can see there is a live ongoing experiment going on in the UK that started in early December with a few million or so very elderly people getting a jab (of phizer I presume) and with AZ now also rolling out. If the severe COVID illness and hospitalisation and death rate in these target groups starts to reduce, which is the whole point of the grouping exercise, we should be starting to see results about now.
At the end of 2020 there was a news item that the average age of a COVID death was 82, which is also about the average age for a non-covid death. As soon as this starts to widen then we will have evidence that all is going well.
... declaring an interest as I am in the cohort!
I have absolutely no doubt that AZ is collecting what data it can from the UK live experiment. However, you have to bear in mind that the UK is generally using both Pfizer and AZ "off-label" in that doses are being applied in a different way from the approved methodology. So any results that are obtained need to be split both between Pfizer and AZ, and between correct dosage and UK emergency dosage - and the latter looking at the myriad different timescales that were used. Of my 12 elderly relatives who have been done, all but 2 have been given Pfizer and 3 have been correctly vaccinated.
Not much use for the UK, but Pfizer is getting excellent statistics from Israel and "taster" results (very encouraging) are beginning to emerge. Obviously it will be a month or two still before ours do.