Glad to hear this worked out for you Dan1113 ! I had AZ yesterday and have had a headache, sore injection site, and some musculoskeletal pain today - nothing unmanageable or worrying - so I think you've drawn the long straw with side effects ;-)

It doesn't surprise me. I've been vaccinating teenagers from day 1. Some of our senior citizen users have commented that they like to see a few younger people getting the vaccine with them, there is no animosity on that at all, not that we would get that in the North East. In the early days a few people turned up with younger relatives, perhaps they have mobility issues, and then at the assessment have asked if their dose could be given to their younger relative instead since "I haven't got long to go anyway". Later on the point about keeping people out of hospital caught on, so we don't get that so much now.

Hearty congratulations on getting vaccinated, I'm glad you persisted.

Thanks. :)

Looking at the Scottish stats, they seem to be struggling to get to near-100% for the 50-54, 55-59 categories, like was seen in the older categories. In some councils, they went really really high then have been mostly flat the last few days. Hopefully not a sign of hesitancy. Some councils are a bit better than others, but some have flat-lined around the 90% mark in the 50-54 category (in one council I saw, it has gone from 90.0% to only 90.3% in the last 11 days.).

I felt more comfortable sticking the thing up both nostrils than down the back of my throat. I also didn't like the thought of putting saliva up my nose but that seems a psychological issue :)

Anyway, I did my first Swiss/Roche test and apart from the fact it tickled it went fine and I had a clear negative result in under 3 minutes. However, that 2cm up the nose was about as far as it would comfortably go anyway. I guess whenever I get my first PCR test I'm going to find that a tad unpleasant.

As an aside, although the packets containing the test pieces are all numbered/coded, the actual plastic "C T" test thing has no other markings on it at all so it's doubtful I'll ever be able to use these for any official testing, such as before flying. Without someone watching me there's no proof of where/when/who took the test. Shame they're not individually identifiable in some way. Are the UK ones better? I guess an alternative is someone in an airport stamps the back of one with something.

I know two people in the 54-50 range living in Glasgow who only just got appointment in the last few days, so they must still be working on those groups.

Some good news from Israel is that daily cases dropped to double digits for the first time since last June. Gibraltar's only current cases are from a handful of visitors.

Data time :)

Cases 1,730 (2,297 last Sunday)
Deaths 7 (10)
Patients admitted 221 (257 on the 30th)
Patients on ventilation 406 (485 on the 2nd)
Patients in hospital 2,862 (3,552 on the 1st)

The figure we were waiting for arrived today - single digit deaths. Daily cases were last this low on 3rd September. The rolling 7 day daily average is now down 30.2% on the previous 7 days.

The UK ones have an individual QR code above the rectangular result window, which you need when reporting a test.

I don't think our First Minister has had her's yet, and she's 50. Otherwise it would have been all over the news.

This is really excellent news.

I do, however, feel especially sorry for those who lose their lives at this stage (and their families): they almost become a footnote to this wave of the pandemic, as the rest of the country is excited about unlocking and moving on. That must be very difficult to bear. It isn’t the best comparison, but a bit like those who were killed after the ceasefire on 11th November 1918.

Good news on both cases and deaths, thought we would see single figures this weekend.

Some health boards like Lanarkshire are already done with 50+ and doing 40+.

She had her letter a week or two ago, whether she had the actual appt yet or not I don't know.

One other piece of good data today, from BBC:

Excellent news! Unfortunately, the US is back to 1000 daily deaths. And that’s despite vaccinating 3 million+ each day.

Are we still expecting an update tomorrow from Shapps about the Global Travel Taskforce report, any idea what time?

They would be in a considerably worse position had they not been vaccinating at a record rate. Global daily cases are near an all time high, yesterday was circa 800k cases so a return to normal for travel is still a long way off.