That's putting it mildly. There's practically no political will in the US for more restrictions - quite the opposite in fact. Restrictions are being removed to varying degrees, depending on which part of the country you're in. People are just sick of it and won't put up with it anymore (I'm generalizing here, but the overall point holds).

I'll stop here before I get too far OT.

Is he deluded or just optimistic?

https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/air/...from-taskforce

I can confirm in Scotland at three places it was a massive no for a walk in vaccine - "there is no wastage problem here" (said as the eight vaccine stations were empty, but who am I to judge).

Ah well, thanks at least for reporting back, it will help others at least. Wales and Northern Ireland have formally started on the 40+ age group, and England informally has done so. Hopefully you will not be too far off. Full marks for trying though.

At my health board places tonight, they also said they are working on 40+ and had I been within that age range I might have had a shot.

Simon Calder sounds like we might hear something tonight?


@SimonCalder
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Expecting Global Travel Taskforce report tonight. The most crucial issues are: When will the decision be taken on whether international travel from England can resume from 17 May? Will we get much more detail on how the "traffic light system will operate?

How the ‘traffic light travel’ system could work

Most disorganised vaccination centre I've helped out at today.
I won't name it, as I'm sure none of the problems were self inflicted.
It is supposedly a MVC, though "mass" is a misnomer. Today there were only 100 patients booked for 6 hours. 4 vaccine stations set up, with lots of surplus staff with little to do. Of the 100 booked, I had the joyous task of turning away 12 people who were under 30. Apparently, I'm diplomatic. Understandable that they wouldn't have been contacted in time to cancel their appointments, but there was no advice to give other than to phone 119 or to ask their GP for a risk assessment. We now know there is another MVC 20 miles away that does have Moderna, hopefully 119 will redirect.
To compound that, there were at least 20 walk-ins, all people who work for the NHS and had had their 2nd appointments for today cancelled due to a shortage of vaccine, who had subsequently been told to try going along as a walk in. Goodness knows how many had been cancelled and didn't try!
We were taking walk-ins, but they had to be aged 50+ or another eligible category.

How terrible, personally I wouldn't be willing to work in those conditions, unless it was a one-off. There is no point in running a centre for 100 vaccinations, you may ask well send a couple of people out and do door to door vaccinations for those with mobility issues who aren't in care homes. (Can't do that with Pfizer though).

For those not aware of the set up, in England there are four channels doing vaccinations
- GP led - this is something like two-thirds of vaccinations, and that's where I've been seconded. These are usually done by a collection of GPs in an obvious area, so there are 31 GPs in Newcastle under my system. GPs handle the comms
- Pharmacies - that's actually a national system, using web bookings.
- Mass Vaccination Centres - which is the national web booking system
- Hospital Hubs - mainly doing their own staff and patients, some reach out to institutions nearby, so for example a university if there is a medical school link up.
Anecdotally MVCs are over engineered and under utilised, personally I would close them, but when you get to 30 somethings then anything other than a web based booking system would be incomprehensible. GPs try hard to get the balance between pragmatism and professionalism since they are in it for the long term. I suspect pharmacies are similar.

People can find these listed in this spreadsheet:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavir...ination-sites/

Although I doubt that paulaf and others lucky enough to be vaccinated already will be rushing there anytime soon, it seems that Mongolia might open up to vaccinated visitors from May 1st or so I'm told by a couple of friend who are trying to rope me into planning a visit to the Olgii Eagle Festival.

As I have mentioned previously, Mrs (Dr) Wilsnunn has been trying to get her vaccination sorted. Of the routes outlined by c-w-s here, none seem to have worked!
- GP gave a resounding "no you cannot have it unless you are 50+ or at risk"
- Web system wouldn't accept healthcare worker as an option any more (as I mentioned previously)
- Her hospital hub is closing tomorrow and will only be doing select individuals on every other Wednesday (or so she has been told) and they cannot guarantee her a slot until on the day itself, and Norwich to Stevenage (where her hospital is [currently on maternity leave]) and back again is not a particularly pleasant trip with a 6month old baby who hates car journeys.

On a similar note, I happened to be passing excel in London yesterday at 7pm, and stopped off to check if they were doing walkins. On the approach there are a few signs telling you not to proceed if you don’t have an appointment, then by the main door they have a semi-permanent sign essentially saying they don’t have any evening surplus today, there is never any evening surplus any day, and please don’t even bother attempting to enter the building.

The centre looked finished for the day anyway, so I didn’t try to enter on either count!

I suppose if you don’t vaccinate anyone at all then it’s quite straightforward to ensure you have no wastage!

Things are moving quickly - the Telegraph is now reporting that AstraZeneca could be restricted to 40+ -- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...jcvi-suggests/

Remember that the 30-somethings with pre-existing conditions that put them at high risk of a bad Covid outcome have already been jabbed, so this is really targeted at the very low risk 30-somethings without pre-existing conditions.

This flip-flopping on AstraZeneca is having an effect. So much for “political decisions”: the confidence hit that these last few days are having will take months to undo (assuming nothing else pops up, that is).

Taking it a step further, Australia has recently announced no AZ for under 50s, Pfizer instead. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-...ople/100057184