UK are really world leading at sequencing. You wonder if this has/is as prevalent elsewhere and the U.K. are just identifying .
I haven’t seen the data used, but over here anyone with either a history of wild type or mutated is offered just one dose and considered fully vaccinated.
I agree mate I’m also confident in the vaccines for severity, etc, be awful for young people.
I said at the time that the UK made the wrong decision to announce that they were not going give the AZ vaccine to under 30s so early, given that they were not due to start vaccinating that genre for another 2 months. You disagreed with me.
Admittedly my concern at the time was that it would further undermine the reputation AZ vaccine given that there were many under 30s and other younger people still to receive their second dose of the vaccine. As it turns out, my worst fears didn't transpire, or at least not in significant numbers, but I hadn't expected a variation to emerge that proved more dangerous to the younger generations.
The country is now in a position whereby we need to be more flexible with our vaccine programme, and consideration needs to be given to treating the younger generation with a higher priority, certainly within the areas most affected by the Indian variant. There is also an argument that the younger age group are the biggest spreaders of covid, so irrespective of the Indian variant we should be prioritising their vaccination to reduce infections anyway.
But the problem we face is that, for various reasons, we don't have a stock of the alternative vaccines to give to the under 30s, an neither are we expecting to have significant stocks any time soon. Even the Pfizer supplies are being prioritised for second doses. We only have available stocks of AZ. I have no doubts in my mind that, had we not already come out and announced the AZ ban, we would now be using it to vaccinate the under 30s and surge vaccinate those areas heavily exposed to the new variant. We still may need to, even though the authorities will have to justify going back on their original decision.
