COVID-19: Vaccine and testing procedures Megathread Part 3 - Read OP

Charles Babbage

Vital Transformation wrote: »

Could well be true. A Tory MP mentioned it on Claire Byrne's show recently, said Ireland would be first to be offered spare vaccines.

The UK does not have any spare vaccines, especially if they stop importing from EU plants that are not fulfilling their own contracts.

Fitz*

Wolf359f wrote: »

It would actually also be the first time the Tory's gave a crap about NI anyone outside the the south of England!
That in itself is telling.

FYP

Melanchthon

I don't get why people are so sure we won't have supply issues going forwards. 2 out of 3 producers in EU/UK so far have had issues right? We have Curevac and J&J coming.

That said unless Novavax are really hitting the ground running or the UK Astra Plants sort their problems I don't see Borris having 4 million doses to give away soon.
I think the smarter and actually more beneficial l thing for the UK to do would be too restrict it to the Border counties, could do it with via direct contact with GP's.

-They solve a significant part of the problem,
-Its good PR
-Its something if FF/FG turn it down they can just run mass vacination centers for people with proof of address that they are in the border counties or via the GP's completely directly.

- Finally and this is the important part, they might actually be able to do this at before Ireland/EU is awash with supplies. They aren't going to have 4 million doses free in the next two months. They might well though have say 200k they could spare next month and then a month or two after that another 200k for the second doses.

charlie14

Briatain has vaccinated first dose around 29 million. Second dose around 3 million.That means in the next 12 weeks they need 26 million doses to complete second doses alone. There are also around 24 million people who have not received a first dose yet.
Difficult to see them sending us 3.7 million vaccines anytime soon.

marco_polo

Don't buy this for one second. Has Boris not just sent an envoy in the last week to India to beg for the 5m vaccines that the Indian Government refused export for. And yet will somehow pull 3.7m doses out of his arse pocket for us in the next few weeks?

Wolf359f

Melanchthon wrote: »

I don't get why people are so sure we won't have supply issues going forwards. 2 out of 3 producers in EU/UK so far have had issues right?.

More like 1/4 (4 approved)
But I'd guess J&J will have issues, so 2/4 will have supply issues.
Moderna was never going to be a big player early on and Pfizer have ramped up well beyond their plans.

NeuralNetwork

I wonder will they have enough time to get the Made in the EU labels off the packs though?

If the vaccines are on offer take them, who cares what some "pretend Irish nationalist" or the EU think.

marno21

The UK has an open land border with us, and they are expected to be easing restrictions ahead of us. An influx of Irish people to NI would threaten to reverse the opening cause by the vaccine rollout if the virus is still raging in the South.

This makes perfect sense. When the UK start having excess, where else would they send them other than to the country whose fate has the greatest impact on their own?

If this turns into political shenanigans MM & co are finished. The people have had enough. Get us out of this cluster**** by any means necessary.

Wolf359f

marno21 wrote: »

The UK has an open land border with us, and they are expected to be easing restrictions ahead of us. An influx of Irish people to NI would threaten to reverse the opening cause by the vaccine rollout if the virus is still raging in the South.

This makes perfect sense. When the UK start having excess, where else would they send them other than to the country whose fate has the greatest impact on their own?

If this turns into political shenanigans MM & co are finished. The people have had enough. Get us out of this cluster**** by any means necessary.

It will only reverse the NI reopening, the Torys don't give a ahit about them, as has been seen over the years. Unless like AZ, they find millions of doses down the back of the sofa, it maybe political suicide to offer Ireland vaccines to protect at risk Irish citizens instead of vaccinating healthy non at risk UK citizens. I mean they took 5mil vaccines from SII, right before India announced an export ban which included COVAX doses.

NeuralNetwork

Of course they will take them. The Irish government even previously inquired about buying “spare” doses and Johnson said none were available, so of course they will take them

The issue however, is whether it’s a genuine offer or just political hot air.

There’s not much point in offering spare capacity if it doesn’t exist. The U.K. itself does not have sufficient capacity to meet its own demand. Their Pfizer doses all come from the EU and their a AstraZeneca doses are heavily dependent on EU and Indian plants, both of which are limiting exports.

It may amount to an offer of doses long after we have sufficient supply from the large number we have booked through the EU.

Our pro-rata share of the total EU theoretical pool is 18.5 million doses, so if anything by Q3 and Q4 we will be donating a lot of doses to COVAX and tapering off and cancelling provisional bookings & orders. Most of which are only theoretical anyway.

We may also need to be looking towards booster shots or revaccination for any variants that end up being resistant.

So unless they can be delivered in the short term, these U.K. doses aren’t likely to be worth much to us at all.

If they’re delivered soon, however, great!

Strazdas

What makes me suspicious of the supposed "offer" is that the UK (unlike the US) is not even manufacturing the majority of its vaccines and is having to import them. It makes no sense at all that they would be importing doses and then passing them straight on to us. One wonders if this is just a nonsensical newspaper article or outright mischief.

Charles Babbage

marno21 wrote: »

The UK has an open land border with us, and they are expected to be easing restrictions ahead of us. An influx of Irish people to NI would threaten to reverse the opening cause by the vaccine rollout if the virus is still raging in the South.

This makes perfect sense. When the UK start having excess, where else would they send them other than to the country whose fate has the greatest impact on their own?

If this turns into political shenanigans MM & co are finished. The people have had enough. Get us out of this cluster**** by any means necessary.

Yes, if they had some next week then it would help but when they have a real surplus in June there will be a lot of vaccine around in any case.

If they really want to help, which I doubt, as distinct from stir trouble, then they should allow people from immediate border areas and those originally from NI use the NI vaccination centres. These are the people who are going to visit NI, people from Cork are not generally going to go there if they have no family there.

CIARAN_BOYLE

marco_polo wrote: »

Don't buy this for one second. Has Boris not just sent an envoy in the last week to India to beg for the 5m vaccines that the Indian Government refused export for. And yet will somehow pull 3.7m doses out of his arse pocket for us in the next few weeks?

No date in the supposed offer.

If it happened it will be for delivery in late June or July when we are basically finished the first dose vaccination of those who want to be vaccinated and going to be doing second doses when due and trying to convince more to be vaccinated.

Supply will not be a constraint then.

IRISHSPORTSGUY

If it's in the next month or two then all hail Boris :pac:

IRISHSPORTSGUY

Happydays2020

IRISHSPORTSGUY wrote: »

Do we accept them?

JTMan

Great news that we will start to get 3.7 million vaccines from the UK from Easter apparently.

Makes so much sense for the UK to help their neighbour. Well done Boris and Arlene Foster for pushing this.

The Sunday Times exclusive on this is here (paywall).

2 more key quotes

Dominic Raab, the UK foreign secretary, Michael Gove, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, have had “outline discussions” about the plan. There are fears that if the Republic were to fall far behind in its vaccination programme, it could trigger a third wave in Northern Ireland when people travel across the border after restrictions are lifted.

A cabinet source said: “Everyone can see the logic of it. It’s good politics, while at the same time solving a genuine public health concern in Northern Ireland.

Public health officials in Northern Ireland have warned No 10 Downing Street of the dangers of lifting lockdown restrictions, given the risks from the slower vaccination rate in the Republic. Infection rates in the south are significantly higher, with 624 cases recorded here yesterday, while there were 138 cases in the north.

I hope MM and team are actively engaged with Boris on this and are ready for a massive ramp up in vaccines.

is_that_so

Happydays2020 wrote: »

Do we accept them?

That's the second big promise in a few days, new main AZ guy here, American, has also been been talking up big deliveries in Q2. So far this quarter we have received about 28% of the AZ total promised.

seamusk84

noplacehere wrote: »

If this is actually due to start arriving around Easter I.e. in two weeks time then it would be political suicide for the government not to take them. The country would collectively lose their ****

Edit: as an aside wouldn’t it be hilarious if we turned them down and then Boris was pissed so just told the north they have permission to vaccinate anyone with an Irish passport lol

That would be excellent! We would have a tangible way to give two fingers to MM and Donnelly.
In fact this would be the best outcome possible as far as I am concerned.

Pablo Escobar

Danzy wrote: »

Not bothering to vaccinate, messing up the supports and development because of stinginess is fairness.

While getting results is nationalism, got you now.

You're the only one that has implied that what the UK is doing I nationalism. I tend to agree, but I didn't mention it. I spoke about the EU and qualified my comment.

Also, it's very funny to see the Brits on this forum running around trying to save face at all costs. Deflection at all costs. The Tory M.O. these days. The point of my post had actually very little to do with the EU, except for the point that it was the main supplier of the UK.

I know the Brits historically have only taken from the third world, but I'd view supplying them over the UK at this point as fairer, definitely. Clearly, given the direction that the UK has lurched over the past few years, the view from there will likely be different and you're representative of that.

This is another yet charade by this UK government. To anyone that's closely monitoring these developments the outlook for the U.K. throughout the next few months is not as rosy as the media will have many believe with regard to vaccines and they certainly don't have enough to give away before we essentially won't need them.

JTMan

Early Irish government reaction to the UK doses ...

"Speculation" but "welcome".

https://twitter.com/NickyRyan_/status/1376068051230154753

Godot.

Happydays2020 wrote: »

Do we accept them?

Ah sure, the Brits did a grand job getting their exclusivity contract with AZ! 'Tis a fine company. Now hand over those millions of vaccines :pac:

CruelSummer

Interview with the British Ambassador in the independent stating vaccines could be given after they’ve supplied their own population first.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/interview-british-ambassador-reveals-that-ireland-is-high-up-on-the-list-for-surplus-covid-vaccines-from-uk-40247363.html

“ "The prime minister says when we get to the stage of having a surplus - which we're far, far away from yet - that Ireland would be high up in our consideration of that. I think not least because of the shared island, you can see there's a strong case for that."

JTMan

Sunday Times report here (paywall) that Ireland turned down 875,000 Moderna doses for delivery in the second half of this year.

EU contract documents, posted online by a Hungarian minister, show that Ireland was among 16 countries, mostly in eastern Europe, that did not buy as many doses as they could have under the first contract with Moderna. The leftover vaccines were snapped up by Germany and Denmark.

Hopefully these doses are not needed for children or boosters later in the year.

Stark

That makes me sick. Starting to think Irish people have been too compliant with the lockdowns and we've been taken for granted as a result. Wonder did they refuse Moderna vaccines from initial offers. A lot of member states did, but I wasn't able to find if Ireland was one of them. The pathetic number of Moderna vaccines we've received so far might suggest so.

is_that_so

Stark wrote: »

That makes me sick. Starting to think Irish people have been too compliant with the lockdowns and we've been taken for granted as a result. Wonder did they refuse Moderna vaccines from initial offers. A lot of member states did, but I wasn't able to find if Ireland was one of them. The pathetic number of Moderna vaccines we've received so far might suggest so.

In order our current vaccine strategies are Pfizer, AZ, J&J and Moderna bringing up the rear at about 10%. Moderna won't deliver in any useful quantities till about Q3 anyway so there's a logic to not ordering them.

Skygord

I'd say the stories about the offer of vaccines to Ireland from the UK, is just being 'floated' right before Ireland's vaccine deliveries ramp-up to around 1m/month.

They'll be hoping in May & June people here in Ireland notice how fast the vaccination programme is going, and some will remember these stories and just assume the vaccines came from the UK, when in fact they were our scheduled deliveries.

Bet we never see any from UK - until Q3 when we expect to have sufficient supplies anyway. Hope I'm wrong.

irishgeo

Are these vaccines Boris stole from us anyway by refusing to the let AZ plants in the UK export to Europe.

Tippbhoy1

Skygord wrote: »

I'd say it's just an offer being 'floated' right before Ireland's vaccine deliveries ramp-up to around 1m/month.

They'll be hoping in May & June people here notice how fast the vaccination programme is going, and some will remember these stories and just assume they came from the UK.

Bet we never see any, until Q3 when we expect to have sufficient supplies anyway.

It’s true but this is from donkeys ago before the AZ ****storm.
I still think it was short sighted mind you, but I can understand why would you buy doses you didn’t think you’d need.