I'm being told that the Brentford Leisure centre vaccination centre is open for walk-ins towards the end of the day. Initially they were saying above 45 years of age, but I know of a friend of mine who got jabbed at 40 and, literally now, another who's 38 but recently has had twins and has been getting so little sleep that he could pass for Gandalf the Grey... Neither had appointments.

Just wanted to say a huge thank you for this! I (29) went down yesterday to Brentford Leisure Centre at around 5pm and managed to get a spare Pfizer dose. There was a large queue in front of me, maybe 60 people and even more behind, I would guess 80. The stewards spent most of their time saying we likely wouldn't get a dose, which caused a lot of people to give up and to leave. I decided to stick it out (granted a 3 hour wait, but thanks to C-W-S and your shared knowledge on this thread re Pfizer stocks I made a calculated decision to persist ) and managed to get one of the last remaining doses, only one more person got in after me. I would suggest to anyone thinking about going, get there around 4pm and stick out the queue if you want more of a guarantee. You will be in for a long wait, but the feeling of relief / happiness afterward was worth it for me! I live in the borough of Richmond upon Thames, but there was no check of being a Hounslow resident. Re car parking, yes there is a car park there and it did seem to have available spaces most of the time.

KSVVZ2015

May 14, 2021 10:46 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by wilsnunn (Post 33251115)

Anybody care to speculate about what might be announced?

So far no change to next week's changes, maybe a threat to June 21 changes, and in addition to the surge vaccinations and testing in hot spots it seems like all over 50s and clinically vulnerable will be accelerated for dose 2 to within eight weeks?

DaveS

May 14, 2021 10:47 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by wilsnunn (Post 33251115)

Anybody care to speculate about what might be announced?

Not watching directly (couldn't cope with that), but they are reporting that the minimum time between vaccinations for over 50s will drop to 8 weeks. The NHS booking site is now overloaded!

fransknorge

May 14, 2021 11:17 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by squawk (Post 33250965)

Not specifically UK related but I thought people would be interested to see progress from Germany. There is good news for anyone wanting to travel here in that the vaccination programme here has thankfully been kicking into gear recently. Data below is from the 'Vaccination Dashboard'.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...468689479a.png
I've not worked out why the vaccinations peak here in the middle of the week (in the UK, it typically seems to peak on a Friday/Saturday). You can clearly see the size of the jump in vaccinations from the beginning of April, and again about 3 weeks ago.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2ba565c2cc.png
This week was the first week there were two days when vaccinations exceeded 1 million in a day - Tuesday 1.062m and Wednesday 1.353 million, so nearer 1.5 then 1m. Yesterday was low by comparison, a bit over 400k, but it was also a public holiday.

It would be really good to try to get other days closer to the typical level of Wednesdays, including weekends, but I'm not familiar enough with the supply side situation here to know if this is a limitation in terms of the doses available, or the capacity to deliver them.

I do know that initially, GPs were not involved in vaccinations but this changed in early April (dark blue in the graph below which shows the numbers of individual vaccines administered) and you can see the impact of this - this also seems to be at least partly responsible for the fluctuating weekly numbers.

I know company doctors, which are very common here especially in larger firms, have been chomping at the bit to get involved too. I don't know if this has started happening yet (if so, it's not de-aggregated in the doses administered data below) or whether this is about to happen, but I think I saw something about it being imminent.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cfdc2f2582.png

Overall, Germany has gone from about 15m doses administered in early March to nearly 40m now, and almost 10m of those have been in the last 2 weeks. Today should push the total number of people vaccinated above 30 million, with approx 9m fully vaccinated.

Progress is, thankfully, being made.

The surge on mid-week days is due to vaccinations in GP practices, which are now the real driver (on days with +1 millions jab, around 800 000 are done in doctors practice, remaining in vaccinodrome). On wednesday a fair bit of practices dedicate this day for vaccination only, with no consultation. Typically Wednesday are reserved for patients on private health insurance, not public, so they switch to vaccination only. Other days they mix vaccinations with consultations. Week-end are low as those are only vaccine centers. A lot of practices are working only Thursday morning, hence lowest day for them.

adrianlondon

May 14, 2021 11:37 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by adrianlondon (Post 33247826)

Switzerland is sticking to a 28-30 day gap between the (Pfizer or Moderna) vaccines. Are you suggesting it's worth trying to find a way to delay the second shot?

And later in the day, the UK now announces that they're going to reduce the amount of time between shots for those 50 and above. I'll stick to my plan to do nothing, and just turn up when I'm told!

8420PR

May 14, 2021 12:14 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by squawk (Post 33250965)

But there is also some bad news for unvaccinated Brits wanting to travel to Germany, as the UK has been added as a risk area, so 10 days (or 5 with test to release) quarantine are required for anyone unvaccinated.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/...ublicationFile

Quote:

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland incl. all British Overseas Territories, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands is considered as additional risk area.

Note: The classification is made despite a 7-day incidence of less than 50/100,000 inhabitants due to the at least limited occurrence of variant B.1.617.2 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Variant B.1.617.2 (first detected in India) has now been classified by WHO as a “Variant of Concern”. When classifying risk areas, qualitative criteria are regularly considered in addition to incidence rates.

The rules have changed so that people who have been vaccinated or have recovered (with a positive covid PCR test at least 28 days old and no more than 6 months old) do not need to present a negative test result when travelling to Germany from risk or high incidence areas, and do not need to quarantine. There are no changes for travel from virus variant areas - a negative test and quarantine is required.

8420PR

May 14, 2021 12:59 pm

oops - double post

squawk

May 14, 2021 1:07 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by fransknorge (Post 33251312)

On wednesday a fair bit of practices dedicate this day for vaccination only, with no consultation. Typically Wednesday are reserved for patients on private health insurance, not public, so they switch to vaccination only. Other days they mix vaccinations with consultations. Week-end are low as those are only vaccine centers. A lot of practices are working only Thursday morning, hence lowest day for them.

Thank you fransknorge for that insight, very helpful in understanding the patterns.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 8420PR (Post 33251466)

But there is also some bad news for unvaccinated Brits wanting to travel to Germany, as the UK has been added as a risk area, so 10 days (or 5 with test to release) quarantine are required for anyone unvaccinated
...
There are no changes for travel from virus variant areas - a negative test and quarantine is required.

Damn, I had not noticed that - thank you 8420PR for flagging but that is very annoying indeed.

The UK was briefly, from 18th April to 14th May (today), neither a risk area nor an area of variant concern. In reality, that meant that if you left the UK between 28th April and 16th May (when the classification applies), you didn't need to quarantine (arriving 19th-27th April meant you were inside a risk area within the previous 10 days and you had to quarantine).

Interesting that the RKI has done this, rather than list us straight as an 'area of variant concern' level, given that the concern is related to - well, a variant. I don't know what the prevalence of B.1.617.2 is in Germany or Europe more broadly.

13901

May 14, 2021 1:18 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by DocWatson (Post 33250603)

This is great, thank you. The council website doesn't mention parking - is the car park open at Fountains? And if necessary are there any tips for people from Kingston to pass as more Hounslow? :D

I went by it today at 19:30ish and braved the manic traffic to get this shot below. There’s parking but also a LOT of queueing - I’d say some 100 people which kind of worries me because this is where I decided to get my second shot!

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ced0e1e2c.jpeg

8420PR

May 14, 2021 1:24 pm

Some information from ECDC on the Indian variants:

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/def...-the-EUEEA.pdf

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8051735b8f.png
They represent less than 2% of sequenced cases in most EU countries, but nearly 6% in the UK. With the caveat that Spain, Portugal, and most Eastern Europe countries are not doing enough sequencing.

The evidence seems to suggest it has higher transmission rates than the Kent variant, but is not vaccine escaping. I can see why it is worth keeping this out of countries that have lower vaccine rates than the UK, and while it is worth discussing I don't think it will have such a big impact in the UK.

Scots_Al

May 14, 2021 2:13 pm

Tip for anyone 40+ in Scotland still waiting for their blue envelope - I gave up waiting patiently today as yet more younger than me were busy boasting of their jags, and filled out the contact form on nhsinform.scot for those missing an invitation.

Within an hour or so, I received a text message with an appointment two weeks away at a close (as the crow flies) but inconvenient location. No idea if that was always my intended slot or whether it was generated by my action. It also gave log in details for a website to rearrange if you couldn’t make it.

Well, I thought I would have a look and see if there was anything sooner, and was able to get an appointment tomorrow at the Louisa Jordan (and actually could have selected pretty much any time I wanted). Bit galling to see so many available appointments though - unless of course they were new ‘surge’ appointments to deal with the outbreak on the south side.

13901

May 14, 2021 2:19 pm

Quote:

Covid: Indian variant could disrupt 21 June easing, PM says

Boris Johnson said if it was found to be "significantly" more transmissible there could be "some hard choices".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57122817

What sort of 'hard choices'? I guess sacking Priti Patel for having failed miserably to stop non-critical travel is off the cards...maybe some local lockdowns? Cuts to travel?

HB7	May 14, 2021 3:00 pm

corporate-wage-slave - I don't know if you covered this before, so apologies if you have. I have a query regarding the vaccine and then getting Covid. So just as an example - if someone gets their first dose. And then let's say 3-4 days after they get the first dose they contract Covid-19. Does this change anything for the duration between the first and second doses; and does this reduce the efficacy at all of the vaccine working long term in general?

corporate-wage-slave

May 14, 2021 3:21 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by HB7 (Post 33251849)

It is possible to get Covid-19 between dose1 and dose2, with the risk greatest in the first few days, but then declining from 10 days or so. Also, and this is less well researched, the impact of any Covid infection is going to reduce with time too. By all means try out a LFD test if you wish. It is best to try and steer clear of infection if you can during the first week, which if you are maintaining social distancing and wearing masks should be pretty unlikely, the risk of infection has never gone away from being someone you live with or someone who visits you at home. A few occupations are risk (food processing, taxi drivers, healthcare) but mostly that's less of a risk. If you do get positive - and that is confirmed by PCR - then you should still get the second dose at the same time, but as mentioned above some countries would say don't bother with dose2. There is a case for that, but the UK approach is to stick to dose2 at the usual 8 week timelag. After dose2 your immune level will be as high as it can be, and the side effects of dose2 may be off the scale too, but the advice is to go ahead with dose2.

Later on, say day 15 from dose1 onwards the chances of infection are lower, and there is some evidence that it can be so mild that it is easily missed (e.g. a mild headache or a small arm rash). You would still need to self isolate as per the usual guidance. It's also worth pointing out that it is easy to confuse one of the common side effects of the vaccines - temperature chills and fever - for Covid.

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