Completely forgot to mention...

[davidgillon]

... that my mother had her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Saturday, which was completely uneventful.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock was just on doing the covid press conference and said so far they've done 2.6 million doses to 2.3 million people, so that's 300,000 have had the double dose despite government strategy moving away from it.

Comments

[alatefeline]

Yay!

[havocthecat]

Moving away from the double dose? Isn't the double dose needed for full efficacy?

[davidgillon]

I could have been clearer, people will still get two doses, but at a 3 month gap, not 3 weeks. See my comment to Sovay

[sovay]

... that my mother had her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Saturday, which was completely uneventful.

Yay!

the double dose despite government strategy moving away from it.

(. . .Isn't it medically necessary to have two doses in order to ensure immunity at the target level?)

[davidgillon]

The plan is everyone still gets two doses, but with the second one at the 12 week mark, not 3-4 weeks. There's apparently evidence to support this working with Oxford/Astrazeneca, but Pfizer are adamant there's no clinical evidence theirs will work that way.

Several other countries are looking at doing this to get some immunity into as many people as possible as quickly as possible, Germany for one, and I believe Biden's mooted it.

[sovay]

and I believe Biden's mooted it.

Well, since to my knowledge we only have access to the Pfizer vaccine and they think the more widely spaced dosage won't work, I hope we don't go with this plan!

[davidgillon]

There's a fairly balanced discussion here: https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/biden-backs-controversial-vaccine-strategy