40% of deaths are under 60 even unvaccinated, so do they have other underlying health issues as I thought for younger healthy people it was never supposed to be a serious disease?

Perhaps, but COVID-19 is a serious respiratory disease, it's a potential killer at all age ranges. Now we are talking about 15 to 20 people a week in England, young and usually in good health, but that was always there, just it wasn't apparent when 8,000 elderly people were dying a week. That's stopped happening, it's gone to near zero for the elderly, even with Delta around. But it's simply incorrect that healthy younger people don't die of COVID, it's rare but it happens.

But doesn't that mean than 60% of people dying are over 60 and likely fully vacc'd? That would be scary. Or are you saying the over 60's who are dying are those who for one reason or another are not fully vacc'd?

The English death rate for the over 60s have dropped from around 8,000 a week in January to around 40 a week here in June. Of those 40 some are not vaccinated or very recently vaccinated, it's actually difficult to get precise information in some cases. But we know that some very old patients were too frail to be vaccinated or there were mental health issues which made them difficult to vaccinate. Some people were double vaccinated, no vaccine is 100% effective. But what we can say is that vaccines are saving a lot of lives now and provide the best barrier we have to Covid deaths.

that is a truly amazing data point and pretty much says it all for getting vaccinated.

C-W-S’s patient, clear explanations are some of the best I’ve seen anywhere. Thank you!

Without going down the very political rabbit hole of whether Delta's arrival here could/should have been delayed via getting India onto the red list sooner, this also explains why the rest of Europe has kept/reapplied restrictions on Brits lately - they really don't want Delta. The British vaccination programme has been a very welcome success, and although the rest of Europe is now proceeding apace, they are still behind.

The latest data on the German dashboard shows that 23,916,490 people or 28.8% of the population is fully vaccinated and 49.6% has had one dose. It varies notably by state: from 26.5% fully vaccinated in Hessen to 34.4% in Saarland. In the UK the equivalent figures today are 30,675,207 people or 58.2% of the population fully vaccinated (just over double Germany), and 80.1% with one dose.

While it is a race against time in the UK to get people up to 2 doses to try and stave off the worst of Delta, the same applies elsewhere - but from a delayed start. Now a lot of factors will influence this, not just the raw number of vaccines delivered in a given time frame but the relative breakdown of different types of vaccine and any changes to the schedule.

For example, in Germany, a greater proportion of the population is using Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna (47.5 million & 5.9 million of 67.5 million doses so far) and these have a shorter interval between the two jabs. In the last few weeks there has been an average of 5.5 million doses delivered per week.

Other countries are - quite reasonably - wanting to prevent the breakout of Delta for as long as possible, because they will feel the consequences of an outbreak much more severely with fewer people vaccinated. However, I suspect that does mitigate against the rapid opening up of Europe to Brits at least for a little while longer.

Edit: found the DW news story from today that I had open in another tab. Delta now makes up 6% of cases in Germany, and although the numbers are small the proportion is rising quickly. The concern is that the next few months will lead to another false sense of security like last summer, and that come Autumn things will be more difficult. Again, it speaks to the need to get as many jabs in arms as quickly as possible.

Hear, hear.

I don’t think this has been mentioned yet. One of the issues in checking availability to move forward a jab when your booking was done on the central NHS site was your had to cancel first before you could see availability. You were basically committed before you knew whether there were any earlier appointments.

Now you can check before you cancel. Go to the site and manage your booking. When you first click to cancel you get a first screen which shows up to the next 5 days of availability at your vaccination centre, and you can confirm cancellation and rebook once you have seen it.

The incidence rate is nearly 150 here in Scotland. :(

My friend got one jab, thought he was invincible, went to a big house party a week later, and surprise surprise, he's now tested positive for covid and is symptomatic. Hopefully not a superspreader event as we really need to catch a break up here in Scotland.

All the complaints coming from the Us about lateral flow tests - are they valid? Are the ukgov ones weaker/worse than all the other antingen tests being used (even for entry into the US)?

Meanwhile a mature approach to being double jabbed (I'm amazed that it is California though I have to say but good on them for it):

California drops workplace mask rule for vaccinated workers

Does anyone know the best approach for trying to get my AZ a few days earlier than 8 weeks?

(I am well aware that this has an impact on effectiveness, and waiting 12 weeks would be better....)

France currently wants visiting Brits to be double-jabbed plus 14 days to avoid self isolation. I've brought my second jab forward as much as I can, now exactly to 8 weeks after the first, but that is only 11 days before the trip. The other half can't reschedule the time off so we're stuck on dates, and much as I do like my in-laws (who are both double jabbed), spending 7 days self-isolating in their house not allowed to leave even for a walk feels like asking for some trouble... Shaving a few days off my vaccine gap at a slight loss in boost effectiveness seems the best approach for me personally.

Should I try a mass vaccination site that's still on AZ? Pharmacy I know that's giving out AZ? Ring my GP and plead? As it's for personal benefit I don't want to be a huge pain to the NHS, so advice appreciated!

The Times are reporting on what was leaked to the Telegraph yesterday, with the added detail that it would be decided on before the next review date on Friday 28th June:


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-vaccine-passport-let-double-jabbed-travellers-beat-quarantine-rule-9hb9pdjzq
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​​​​​​If you're near London there are centres doing drop ins..

Are there any for Pfizer? My wife still has five weeks to go till her second dose appointment which we have only managed to move from 11 to 10 weeks from the first.