Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by Jaruzel | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

Jaruzel

Article now says 'Under 50s from End of January' - post title needs updating.

Also, non paywalled take on the news:

https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/20/covid-vaccine-to-roll-out-to-...

View on HN

From the article:

"The HSJ says the plan it has seen lays out the priority groups for receiving the vaccine, and the dates they'll be offered it:

Beginning of December: Healthcare workers, care home residents and care home staff

Mid-December: People aged 80 or over

Late December: Those aged 70 to 80

Early January: Everyone aged 65 to 70, as well as all high and moderate risk under 65s Mid-January: Everyone aged 50 to 65

Late January: Everyone else over the age of 18 (but most of this group would be vaccinated during March, the report says)"

Didn't realise it was paywalled, sorry.

that sounds incredibly ambitious (if not unrealistic) to me, how is that supposed to work? Currently, there's only a single vaccine that's probably going to hit the market in Europe soon, and that's the Biontech/Pfizer one. They said they'll have 50 million doses available in December, but that's for both the US as well as the EU and the UK (which means 25 million people can get vaccinated in total). How is that possibly enough for health-care workers and care-home residents in the UK as well as people aged 80 or over?

And it's going to be a similar situation in January and February, sure Bntch/Pfizer will produce a decent amount of vaccines specifically for the European market in Belgium and Germany, but again that's going to be hardly enough for everyone over the age of 18 in the UK - especially given the fact that those doses will have to be shared with all other European nations.

You have a second vaccine, from Moderna, that looks like it will be approved in the EU for December as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-20/eu-could-...

Once both are approved, assume that production can be ramped up even further.

afaik, the Moderna vaccine is only going to be available outside the US in Spring (around March, April)

I'm also not sure how they can possibly arrive at this with Pfizer and Moderna alone. I'm assuming it's factored in an Oxford approval.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com