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All English Adults to be Offered Covid Vaccine by End of the Week

All adults in England are expected to be offered a Covid vaccine by the end of the week. The country lags just slightly behind Wales which opened up vaccine bookings for all over-18s on Monday. Sky News has the story.

Sir Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the NHS in England, said the health service hoped to “finish the job” of vaccinating people over the next month.

He told the NHS Confederation conference: “It is now very important that we use the next four weeks to finish the job to the greatest extent possible for the Covid vaccination programme…

“By July 19th we aim to have offered perhaps two-thirds of adults across the country double jabs.”

He also said that from today 23 and 24 year-olds would be able to book an appointment.

“I expect that by the end of this week, we’ll be able to open up the National Booking Service to all adults age 18 and above,” added Sir Simon…

Sir Simon also told the NHS conference that new treatments for people with Covid were expected in the coming months.

“We expect that we will begin to see further therapies that will actually treat coronavirus and prevent severe illness and death,” he said.

“Today I’m asking the health service to gear up for what is likely to be a new category of such treatments – so-called neutralising monoclonal antibodies – which are potentially going to become available to us within the next several months.”

The NHS England boss said community services would be needed to deliver the infusion to people before they are hospitalised, and typically within three days of infection.

The treatment aims to “neutralise” the virus in infected patients and prevent serious disease.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  15 June 2021 • 12.56
   
48 comments

Vaccine Safety Update

This is the fifth of the weekly round-ups of Covid vaccine safety reports and news compiled by a group of medical doctors who are monitoring developments but prefer to remain anonymous in the current climate (find the fourth one here). By no means is this part of an effort to generate alarm about the vaccines or dissuade anyone from getting inoculated. It should be read in conjunction with Lockdown Sceptics‘ other posts on vaccines, which include both encouraging and not so encouraging developments. At Lockdown Sceptics we report all news about the vaccines whether positive or negative and give no one advice about whether they should or should not take them. Unlike with lockdowns, we are neither pro-vaccine nor anti-vaccine; we see our job as to report the facts, not advocate for or against a particular policy. The vaccine technology is novel and the vaccines have not yet fully completed their trials, which is why they’re in use under temporary and not full market authorisation. This has been done on account of the emergency situation and the trial data was largely encouraging on both efficacy and safety. For a summary of that data, see this preamble to the Government’s page on the Yellow Card reporting system. We publish information and opinion to inform public debate and help readers reach their own conclusions about what is best for them, based on the available data.

  • Questions have been raised by Trial Site News on whether Pfizer failed to perform industry standard animal testing prior to the start of human trials, following a worrying response to a Freedom of Information request from a group of Canadian physicians.
  • According to the FDA, in the Pfizer clinical trials on children aged 12-15, of the 1,127 children who received a first dose, no fewer than 86% experienced an adverse reaction. Of the 1,097 children who received a second dose, 78.9% experienced an adverse reaction. Several children also developed deep vein thrombosis (resulting in pulmonary embolism) post-vaccination. 
  • Does the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein trigger certain forms of cancer? An exploration of the data after autopsies found two of eight COVID-19 sufferers with undetected thyroid cancer.
  • Dr Tess Lawrie of the Evidence-based Medicine Consultancy wrote an open letter to Dr June Raine, Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), calling for the “cessation of the vaccination roll out while a full investigation is conducted” as “the MHRA now has more than enough evidence on the Yellow Card system to declare the COVID-19 vaccines unsafe for use in humans”.
  • A pre-print study from Cleveland, Ohio, reported in the Washington Examiner, finds that vaccination offers no additional protection from COVID-19 infection after a person has been previously infected.
  • The first post-mortem of a patient vaccinated against COVID-19, reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, found that the 86 year-old man had viral RNA present in all organs of his body.
  • The BMJ reports on a Norwegian review that finds the Pfizer Vaccine is “likely” responsible for the some of the deaths in the elderly post-vaccination.
  • Switzerland has approved the vaccination of children as young as 12 without their parents permission from July.
  • The BMJ reports further concerns regarding immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) after vaccination with AstraZeneca (also reported in the Daily Mail).  
  • A report from Australia of a probe launched by the medicines regulator after eight people developed Guillain-Barré Syndrome following an AstraZeneca vaccination.
  • Italy has halted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for the under-60s after the death of a teenager with blood clots following vaccination.
  • There have been further reports of heart inflammation following vaccination with the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna). The Daily Mail reports on the CDC calling an urgent meeting over 226 cases of heart inflammation in teenage boys who have had the Pfizer or Moderna shots.
  • EudraVigilance – the equivalent of the Yellow Card reporting system in the EU – has logged reports claiming 13,867 people have died and 1,354,336 have suffered injuries following receipt of the Covid vaccines in the EU (as of June 5th).
  • Suspected adverse events in the U.K. as reported in the media: Laura Hamilton (39); Jennifer Rose (65).

Summary of Adverse Events UK

According to an updated report published on June 10th (covering the period up to June 2nd), the MHRA Yellow Card reporting system has recorded a total of 922,596 events, based on 267,671 reports. The total number of fatalities reported is 1,295.

  • Pfizer (14.7 million first doses, 10.7 million second doses) now has one Yellow Card in 374 doses, 2.9 adverse reactions (i.e., symptoms) per card, one fatal reaction in 62,562 doses. 
  • AstraZeneca (24.5 million first doses, 15.7 million second doses) has one Yellow Card in 205 doses, 3.7 adverse reactions per card, one fatal reaction in 46,581 doses.
  • Moderna (0.46 million first doses) has one Yellow Card in 140 doses, 2.8 adverse reactions per card, one fatal reaction in 115,000 doses.

A curiosity is that the rate of Yellow Cards went up for Moderna from an already very high level (higher than at any point for AstraZeneca) despite there being only 60,000 shots administered this week.

Key events analysis:

Vaccine Safety UpdateRead More

By Will Jones  /  15 June 2021 • 12.18
       
47 comments

10,000 Fewer Patients in England Started Treatment for Breast Cancer in Past Year

Progress in reducing deaths from breast cancer has been put at risk because of lockdown and the prioritisation of Covid above all other diseases (as well as the reluctance of people to “burden” the NHS thanks, in part, to Government messaging), with more than 10,000 fewer patients in England alone having started treatment in the past year compared to the year before. The Guardian has the story.

According to an analysis of NHS England figures by Cancer Research U.K. (CRUK), about 38,000 fewer cancer patients began treatment between April 2020 and March 2021, compared with the same period a year earlier. Just under 28% of these were breast cancer patients, equating to about 10,600 people.

With CRUK noting that 2018 figures suggest about 15% of new cancers are breast cancer, it seems the disease has been disproportionately affected by the Covid pandemic, with the charity saying the majority of those who have missed out on breast cancer treatment are likely to be people who have yet to be diagnosed, with the vast majority in an early stage of the disease.

Cancer that is detected early is generally more treatable.

The charity said the cancers may not have been picked up in part because of the pause in breast cancer screening during the early part of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to another charity, Breast Cancer Now, almost one million British women, including about 838,000 in England, missed a breast cancer screening appointment during the height of the first wave of coronavirus.

However, CRUK said other factors behind the drop may include the reluctance of some to seek help for symptoms when the Covid waves were at their peaks, either because of concerns about burdening the NHS or because they were afraid of catching Covid.

The charity said the figures suggested progress in reducing breast cancer deaths could be at risk: while the disease is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in the U.K., mortality rates have dropped almost 40% since the 1970s.

Dr Ajay Aggarwal, a Consultant Clinical Oncologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS trust, whose own work has suggested diagnosis delays caused by the pandemic may lead to 3,500 deaths in England from four main cancers in the next five years, said the latest figures confirmed what was feared at the beginning of the Covid outbreak when cancer services were significantly disrupted.

“This also confirms work recently undertaken in south-east London, where during the first wave of the pandemic, across a region of 1.7 million people, there were 30% fewer diagnoses of breast cancer,” he said. “This is likely to worsen when considering the cumulative impact of the second wave.”

He said similar trends were being seen across a range of other cancers. “For those eventually presenting, the data suggests – and clinical experience – that patients are presenting with more advanced, complex disease, which is either incurable or associated with worse prognosis compared to if they had been diagnosed earlier.”

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  15 June 2021 • 10.59
   
19 comments

Keeping Schools Open Had Only a Minor Impact on the Spread of COVID-19 in Sweden

Sweden was one of the few Western countries that kept schools open in the spring of 2020. Pre-schools, primary schools and lower-secondary schools (for those up to age 16) continued with in-person teaching, whereas upper-secondary schools switched to online instruction on March 18th.

Despite this, zero Swedish children died of COVID-19 up to the end of June. In fact, only 15 were admitted to the ICU, and four of these children had a serious underlying health condition. 

So keeping schools open didn’t cause any deaths among Swedish children. But did it increase the spread of COVID-19? Although evidence suggests that children are less infectious than adults, their level of infectiousness is not zero. In addition, teachers could transmit the virus to one another in the staff room, and parents could do so when picking their children up from school.

In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Stockholm and Upsala University examined the impact of keeping schools open on the spread of COVID-19 in Sweden. Their analysis focused on the period from March 25th to June 30th. 

The authors used rigorous methods to estimate the causal impact of keeping schools open on COVID-19 outcomes among parents, and among teachers. Specifically, they compared parents whose youngest child was in the last year of lower-secondary school (Year 9) to those whose youngest child was in the first year of upper-secondary school (Year 10). 

This method ensured that the two groups of parents were as similar as possible with respect to other possible causes of COVID-19 outcomes. But to be safe, the authors controlled statistically for characteristics like the age, occupation and region of the parents.

They found that there was only one additional positive PCR test per 1,000 parents among those whose youngest child was in the last year of lower-secondary school. They also looked at the number of diagnosed cases of COVID-19, but found this did not differ significantly between the two groups of parents. 

When the authors compared teachers from lower-secondary schools with those from upper-secondary schools, the differences were somewhat larger. However, the overall impact of keeping schools open on the spread of COVID-19 was small. The authors estimate that keeping schools open resulted in 620 more cases in a country that saw more than 53,000 up to mid June. 

They conclude that closing schools “is a costly measure with potential long-run detrimental effects for students”. And their results are “are in line with theoretical work indicating that school closure is not an effective way to contain SARS-CoV-2”.

By Noah Carl  /  15 June 2021 • 08.40
     
63 comments

News Round-Up

By Jonathan Barr  /  15 June 2021 • 02.27
 
46 comments

“Four More Weeks to, Er…” – The Weakest Excuse for a Lockdown Yet

What justifies a lockdown? That’s the question which, 16 months after the policy was introduced into Western democracies as a draconian tool of disease management, we still don’t have a clear answer to. First sold to the public as a way of mitigating peak health service demand during the initial pandemic wave (and thus supposedly saving lives by ensuring more people could get treated – ignore the irony that the overuse of ventilators during those first few weeks likely increased the mortality rate), the justification has evolved over time. In November it was a “circuit breaker” to save Christmas, though Christmas was not saved. In January it was to buy time to allow the most vulnerable to receive at least their first vaccine dose, though it turned out that was not enough to restore our freedoms.

Yesterday the Prime Minister and his scientific flunkies Chris Witless and Patrick Unbalanced unveiled the Government’s latest excuse to keep the restrictions going. “The objective of this short delay,” said the Prime Minister, “is to use these crucial weeks to save thousands of lives, of lives that would otherwise be lost… by vaccinating millions more people as fast as we can.”

Sir Patrick elaborated on three benefits to the delay:

  1. Some protection for over-18s as they will have been offered one vaccine by July 19th.
  2. More protection for over-40s as more of them will have had both their vaccine doses.
  3. Reopening will be near to the school holidays when no mixing in schools will take place.

What none of the three explained was why these benefits justified four more weeks of restrictions, which hospitality leaders have said will mean a £3 billion loss to the industry during what should be one of its busiest trading periods.

The vaccines are “not 100% effective”, Vallance said, as though anyone had ever suggested they were, “and therefore avoiding a very large peak is very important. Realistically, if we ever got a very large wave, there would be a very large number of people in hospital”.

But would there? If the vaccines are as good as they are reported to be at reducing serious illness – Vallance described them yesterday as “spectacularly more effective than we ever could have hoped for” – then even if there are lots of cases in the young, why should hospitals get overrun?

Vallance explained that it was only because of the vaccines that they weren’t already looking at new lockdown measures: “If we didn’t have the vaccinations we’ve got, we would be looking at what lockdowns would be needed.” This is despite him also acknowledging that: “This is a virus that’s going to be with us forever.” Together these statements imply that lockdowns, too, are going to be with us forever, hanging over us, threatened whenever over-zealous public health advisers can persuade a risk-averse Prime Minister that the latest variant or virus is going to, well, what? As I say, that’s the question that still hasn’t been answered.

The latest restrictions are intended to “reduce the peak by 30-50%”, Vallance said. But will it be a big peak or a small peak? “Thousands of lives” will be saved, said the Prime Minister. But how many thousands? After all, thousands of lives are lost in the U.K. to contagious diseases every year – mostly though not exclusively among the very frail and otherwise unwell. If restrictions on social interaction are justified merely to save “thousands of lives”, why not impose them every winter? Or keep them in place permanently to prevent people getting too close and spreading their germs? That’s the logic of this mad, totalitarian approach to disease control (even if we allow, for the sake of argument, that lockdowns are effective at controlling COVID-19, a theory for which there is no real-world evidence).

The Prime Minister made much of a recent “doubling” in Covid hospital admissions, though on the Government dashboard hospital admissions are still short of doubling.

“Four More Weeks to, Er…” – The Weakest Excuse for a Lockdown YetRead More

By Will Jones  /  15 June 2021 • 02.10
         
130 comments

Boris Announces Extension of Lockdown by Four “Crucial Weeks” – Noting “Possibility” That a “Far More Dangerous” New Variant Could Cause Further Delays After July 19th

Boris Johnson has announced that lockdown will be extended until July 19th. At a Downing Street briefing, the Prime Minister said that four more “crucial weeks” of restrictions were needed to prevent the virus from “outrunning” the vaccine and to prevent “thousands more deaths that could otherwise have been avoided”.

The PM hopes that “easing off the accelerator” will allow enough time for two-thirds of the adult population to be fully vaccinated against Covid, but warned that “a proportion of the elderly and vulnerable may still succumb [to the virus] even if they have had two jabs”.

Weddings and wakes with over 30 guests will be permitted after June 21st, so long as social distancing guidelines are followed, and there is a possibility that restrictions could end after a two-week extension on July 5th. The chances of this are, however, very slim. Boris said:

[We must] wait another four weeks – or maybe as little as two weeks. But let’s be realistic, [it’s] probably more likely [to be] four weeks.

Whereas June 21st was a “not-before date”, the PM is “pretty confident that July 19th will be, as it were, a terminus date”. That is unless yet another “new variant” emerges.

At that stage [when, by July 19th, the vaccine roll-out has created a “wall of immunity”]… I am confident that we will be able to go forward with the full… opening. That, of course, doesn’t exclude the possibility… that there is some new variant that is far more dangerous – that kills people in a way that we currently cannot foresee or understand. That’s obviously the case.

As before, Boris maintains that the roadmap to freedom should be “cautious” but “irreversible”. You can watch the full briefing here.

Stop Press: Sam Coates of Sky News says that “Labour will back the four-week delay to lockdown lifting step four”.

They will characterise it as a consequence of Boris Johnson’s mishandling and criticise [the] lack of economic support.

Stop Press 2: According to YouGov, 71% of English adults support the unlocking delay.

Stop Press 3: GB News has reported on the lockdown protesters marching outside Downing Street today.

The people are really angry. “Enough is enough” was the message that [came] from there – people wanting to just have the choice now to get out there and live their lives again.

By Michael Curzon  /  14 June 2021 • 19.23
         
294 comments

If Not Now, When? Tory Backbenchers Rage at the Delay to Lifting Restrictions

The Prime Minister will have to put the delay to the lifting of lockdown restrictions to a vote in the House of Commons before the end of June – a vote which he will likely win (thanks to support from Labour), but not without a swell of opposition from his own MPs. Tory backbenchers, including Sir Charles Walker, are particularly irked by the idea that “Freedom Day” could be pushed back not just by four weeks but into the month of August, and that the roadmap could later be “reversed”. The MailOnline has the story.

Mr Johnson is set to offer an olive branch to some industries that will be worst-hit by the delay, including lifting the cap on the number of guests who can attend weddings. He is also expected to permit more outdoor seated spaces at sporting events.

The concessions come as Tory MPs join hospitality and other business leaders in venting their fury at the postponement, warning it will cost firms millions of pounds.

Vice Chairman of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbench MPs Sir Charles Walker said that “existing isn’t living” as he raised concerns that the Government’s roadmap could be reversed.

“Eventually, if you say you are going to live with Covid, ultimately at times you are going to have to tough it out. Existing isn’t living,” the MP told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme. 

“So I just have an overwhelming sense of pessimism now. If you can’t lift restrictions at the height of summer, and we are in the height of summer, then you almost certainly are looking at these restrictions persisting and tightening into the autumn and winter.

“I don’t think the July 19th date will be met. If it is, it will be met for weeks before we enter further lockdowns.”

New analysis by Public Health England (PHE) has revealed that 29% of Covid deaths from the B.1.617.2 Indian strain had received two injections. And, in a further blow, the PHE report suggests the Delta variant has a 64% increased risk of household transmission compared to the Kent (Alpha) variant.

However, some hardline anti-lockdown Tories are furious about any delay at all, as they wanted the lifting of lockdown to be faster than it has been…

Former minister Steve Baker channelled classic war film The Great Escape in a message to Covid Recovery Group MPs last night, according to Politico, saying: “It is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. 

“If they cannot escape, then it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability.”

And theatre impresario Sir Howard Panter warned the industry will suffer “significant damage” if the final lifting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions in England is put on hold. 

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  14 June 2021 • 16.21
       
90 comments

All Welsh Adults Offered First Dose of Covid Vaccine

All adults in Wales have been offered the first dose of a Covid vaccine. This event has occurred six weeks ahead of schedule, according to the Welsh Government. BBC News has the story.

Data published by Public Health Wales on Monday showed 2,216,031 people have been given a first vaccine dose – 70.3% of the population.

Wales’s vaccine roll-out is ahead of every world nation with a population of more than one million people.

Health Minister Eluned Morgan said reaching the milestone before the original July target was “remarkable”.

Wales remains ahead of the other U.K. nations in the total proportion of the population given a first jab.

Clinics are now accelerating second doses amid growing concerns about the spread of the delta variant.

While all those who are most vulnerable to Covid have been offered the vaccine in Wales, and take-up has been high (90% among the over-50s), Baroness Morgan says the country should not become “complacent” about its vaccine roll-out efforts. “We are keen to see 18 to 39 year-olds vaccinated and hope to reach our milestone of 75% take-up in this age group by the end of this month.”

Meanwhile, zero deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test were reported in Wales on 10 of the 13 first days of June, yet a range of restrictions remain in place.

The BBC News report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  14 June 2021 • 13.51
     
28 comments

Lockdown Could Continue Past July 19th, Says Health Minister

The Prime Minister has yet to formally announce a four-week delay to the end of lockdown in England, but Government figures have already hinted that the imposition of restrictions could be extended beyond July 19th and even into the month of August. The Sun has the story.

Health Minister Ed Argar said it is “of course possible” that a longer delay will be needed to get the Indian variant under control.

But he said the hope is to use the month-long window to get 10 million second jabs into arms, extending full protection to 75% of Brits.

The PM is set to announce Freedom Day is being pushed back by four weeks to July 19th during a Downing Street press conference at 6pm.

He’ll include a break clause, meaning the lifting of restrictions could go ahead on July 5th if hospitalisations don’t significantly rise.

But some ministers fear that with cases spiralling the health situation could go the other way and curbs will need to stay in place for longer.

Asked about that possibility, Mr Argar said: “Were there to be a delay of course that’s possible.

“But I and the PM and the Health Secretary want to see restrictions removed as soon as it’s safe to do so, and any delay as short as possible.

“We’ve got to recognise vaccination is the key. This disease will become endemic and we’ve got to learn to live with it.

“We will not get to a zero Covid. Vaccination is the way to get to the point where we can live with this disease.”

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also warned he couldn’t provide an “absolute guarantee” restrictions will definitely be lifted on July 19th.

But Mr Argar was adamant that there will be no rolling back of the roadmap and return to the previous lockdown.

He said: “The key thing the PM has always said throughout is the dates set out in the roadmap were the earliest possible date it could happen.

“He’s been clear each step is irreversible, that is why he’s considering now whether or not to delay step four.

“The reason the gaps between stages are five weeks and the reason it’s staggered over a number of months – I know people would’ve wished it to be faster – is because he believes on the basis of the advice he’s received that means it can be irreversible.”

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  14 June 2021 • 10.48
       
145 comments