Who do the government think they are kidding with their vaccine rollout timeline?

Harpon

They are saying most of the country should be vaccinated by end of summer, what planet are they living on? The oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will not be approved by the EU until February at the very earliest as they haven’t even applied for approval yet. It’s likely they will wait until all of the UK has been vaccinated before they apply for approval in other countries. In the meantime, the moderna vaccine will be approved shortly, but given we are only going to receive enough of that and the Pfizer one to vaccinate about 100 thousand or so a month, I’m struggling to see how they think everyone will be done by the end of summer.

Why could you not post this in the Vaccine thread instead of starting a new one?

Melanchthon

Harpon wrote: »

They are saying most of the country should be vaccinated by end of summer, what planet are they living on? The oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will not be approved by the EU until February at the very earliest as they haven’t even applied for approval yet. It’s likely they will wait until all of the UK has been vaccinated before they apply for approval in other countries. In the meantime, the moderna vaccine will be approved shortly, but given we are only going to receive enough of that and the Pfizer one to vaccinate about 100 thousand or so a month, I’m struggling to see how they think everyone will be done by the end of summer.

I am fairly sure that Ireland could approve the Oxford-Astrazenca vaccine independently earlier than the EU as a whole.
Remember when the British politician said the quicker approval of the Pfizer vaccine was a Brexit dividend there was a fair few commentators talking about how they were actually using emergency approval system that's allowed in the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/02/hancock-brexit-helped-uk-to-speedy-approval-of-covid-vaccine

Ireland not following this path is a choice.

I am seriously worried they are going to mess up this phase in Ireland as they are in love with locking down certain sectors, look at the attitude to testing and contact tracing and so on.
Also they need to bring in more people/systems to administer the vaccine, in the UK they are drawing from St Johns ambulance and other organisations, not to be flippant but giving an injection isn't rocket science (think of heroin addicts) restricting those capable of administration to only GP's and fully qualified pharmacists is going to either be far too slow or place a huge strain on already busy people.

Necro

Mod:

There is already a vaccine thread, no need for another one