Only 220k today though must be the weekend effect, maybe the snow caused a blip?

Do not confound vaccinate vs inoculate a shot. A vaccination requires two inoculations.

Yeh I think you're right. Last Sunday (18th Jan) it was 208k I think. So it seems like less vaccinations happen on Sunday generally.

I would imagine 4 significant vaccine centres being closed in Wales yesterday due to snow would have assisted in reducing the numbers.

From the Mirror: Hotel quarantine plans 'will stop Brits holidaying abroad for a year', experts fear

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-new...658#r3z-addoor

It's getting better.
Now Dailymail saying Brazil and SA hotel quarantine to be implemented first with the rest coming later, I guess this is to keep the fear factor level high!

​​​​​​https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ine-plans.html

Also the vaccine war is really starting to get ugly, EU threatening to block exports of vaccines (this will hurt UK for Pfizer, not Astra as that is mostly made in UK) and Germany claiming Astra Zeneca only 8% effective over 65's and Astra Zeneca denying this completely. Pfizer looks like amazing results on the field in Israel.

As someone who lost his job in the travel industry last year, I can confirm that it was very much already in tatters before the talk of quarantine hotels.

(I have a new job, btw, different industry...)

Germany claiming AZ/Oxford only 8%?? LOL - we always knew these political games were going to happen. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Incredibly sorry to hear that. It's a real shame, particularly as the government has hardly consulted with the travel industry when it makes decisions. Heathrow begged the government to look into testing for months - and the government completely ignored it, and now look where we are.

They just make up rules as they go, often based on nothing. It's a shambles and its people like you in the travel industry who have already lost their job or are about to.

Well Britain bet the farm on AZ/Oxford. I guess we’ll know in 8-10 weeks...

so did the EU. It ordered more AZ vaccine than any other one.

tbh the report is extremely suspect. Unless the MHRA in the UK has made the biggest error ever, the data clearly shows much higher effectiveness than 8% in over 65s. Had it been that low it simply would not have been approved for that age segment.

From the point of view of Germany and others in the EU, I suspect their time would be better served asking why the EMA is taking so long, as of two weeks ago they hadn’t even started the approval process for the AZ vaccine.

In addition to this - why the EU took so long to approve the pfizer vaccine as well. The vaccine was in part developed in Germany by BioNTech, but it took the EMA 3 weeks longer than the UK and 10 days than the US to approve it.

COVID is getting really political really fast. California lockdowns released after Newsom is in trouble, no longer stay at home order. I wonder if something similar will happen in the UK with regard to lockdowns. And the Netherlands has a 3 night in a row riot scene due to its curfew (still never understood the point of a curfew during lockdown, its not like you can go clubbing!)
The data is looking good though and it is winter, so I don't see too much activity before early March, but the Times is rumouring Primary schools to start again after 15 Feb.

Also yes the data doesn't make sense, yes you can have differences in effectiveness over ages but suddenly collapsing to 8% with the same vaccine just because you are older? Come on now.

No Germany does not claim that AZ/Oxford has 8% efficiency. An article published in the Handelsblatt report the efficacy of the AZ/Oxford vaccine over 65 yo is 8%, claiming anonymous sources in the federal government.


I am sure you have a strong argument based on immunology to affirm age does not impact an adenovirus vectored vaccine efficiency significantly ?

The German government is actively asking the EMA the reason for delays. They pushed the agency to approve the BioNtech vaccine earlier than expected already.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germ...ore-christmas/

Is it something to do with the kind of approval?

IIRC the Pfizer vaccine was initially just given batch-by-batch approval, before later getting a general approval. I believe that the Oxford / AZ vaccine is still on batch-by-batch approval in the UK (including with some batches getting rejected, which makes the supply chain lumpy), until their GMP / QA gets the nod to do all the checking themselves so they can move to full approval.