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Poorly run / distanced hospitality is a major transmission route
Got stats on that?
What I read suggested that hospitality contributes a tiny, tiny amount to transmissions.
If I've got my mental sums right, that 0.02% people in 43000 infected excluding the placebo group? Wow thats some success.
Love to think the Pfizer vaccine is the holy grail but wonder how much is the media getting very excited.
Hope it is though the answer to this nightmare.
Isn’t Pfizer well behind the oxford vaccine? Maybe they just publish mid trial as opposed for waiting for it to fully read out like we do?
Sounds positive though.
What I read suggested that hospitality contributes a tiny, tiny amount to transmissions.
Miniscule. And its all down to a small number of badly run places. The majority of hospitality places are about as covid-safe as you're likely to get. Far safer than going into a supermarket
We won't need to worry about it for too much longer though. The problem will be somewhat academic when they've all gone bust. Ironically, the badly run places that have flouted the rules are the ones that will be more likely to survive
Maybe the reason Hospitality doesn't show transmission is the complete failure of the T&T app/system to actually log people and follow up.
Maybe the reason Hospitality doesn’t show transmission is the complete failure of the T&T app/system to actually log people and follow up.
Nope, its world class
The envy of the world
@binners - likewise, there is a huge difference in responsibility of hospitality owners by us. I agree that it seems very unfair that those who havent made the financial outlay, and who are flouting social distancign to get people in aren't being adequately punished; though I know our local council has become more proactive it seems. What I will say is that those who have made the effort do seem to be recognised for that and have grateful clientele so hopefully it will stand them in good stead.
@lunge - There were various bar charts in the press. Then there was also the paper that suggested eat out to help out contributed to 18% of cases over summer.. the link is somewhere up the thread. As above there is such a range of environments, a well ventilated cafe being very different to a dingy, sticky floored social club.
I'm not knocking hospitality, my wife has various venues as clients and some have really gone above and beyond to keep their venues safe. I am a bit uneasy our lcokdown has been lifted though. What's more WG have painted themselves into a corner by commiting to no more lockdowns till after christmas (I've not seen it but apparently the first minister tweeted that)
So here’s a depressing compliance related anecdote.
Was chatting to a friend earlier who is a paramedic. He recently blue lighted a man with stomach issues to A&E. The man refused to wear a mask in the ambulance or the whole time he was in casualty and the x-ray dept. He was admitted for his stomach issues and tested and found to be asymptomatic positive for Covid.
Our small local hospital has had quite a few staff cases recently, who knows how many other patients caught it while he was wandering around............
If I’ve got my mental sums right, that 0.02% people in 43000 infected excluding the placebo group? Wow thats some success.
Or looked at another way 9 people in 21000 got Covid whilst under the protection of the trial vaccine. That's a rate of 42 per 100,000 whilst I presume taking the normal measures the rest of us are taking and being surrounded by other people being similarly considerate. It sounds like the test subjects were all over the world so I've no idea what the average 'background' infection rate is but where I live 42/100,000 is quite large in comparison.
Clearly a huge leap forward but it's just shifted the decimal point one place in the risk factor.
Vaccine! Pfizer claiming 90% of people are protected by it. Some good news/hope!
Remember a published uk infection rate is only symptomatic cases, so 2/10 of all cases. Plus the vaccine numbers are over a long period.
Remember a published uk infection rate is only symptomatic cases, so 2/10 of all cases. Plus the vaccine numbers are over a long period.
true
Yep - 42/100k is weekly. probably more like 300/100k. over the same period as the vaccine trial, 3000/100k.
Whereas the trial results of 42/100k were in areas where the pandemic were raging.
Bawjaws announced we've bought 40 million doses of this..
Monday, July 20, 2020 - 12:00am
NEW YORK & MAINZ, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) today announced an agreement with the United Kingdom to supply 30 million doses of their BNT162 mRNA-based vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2, currently in development, subject to clinical success and regulatory approval. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed, but the terms were based on the timing of delivery and the volume of doses.
Yep – 42/100k is weekly. probably more like 300/100k. over the same period as the vaccine trial, 3000/100k.
Whereas the trial results of 42/100k were in areas where the pandemic were raging.
That does not quite square - the placebo group only had a rate of 400/100,000. By your reckoning they did significantly better than the background infection rate.
As I said, when comparing trial vaccine to placebo the decimal point has shifted one place in risk factor. A great start but not a panacea.
Bawjaws announced we’ve bought 40 million doses of this..
40 million tins of Tizer being delivered as we speak.
The vaccine is great news but noticed that it has to be transported at -80°C which will make distribution interesting!
Ultra cold chain distribution is an issue with most of the vaccines on trial, IIRC.
How long from exposure to shedding the virus?
The kids break up on 18 Dec and won’t then be out of the house until Xmas. For me, a -ve test on 22/23 reduces the risk significantly. We are definitely in a risk balancing phase imho.
It's a numbers game, and I wouldn't dream of criticising someone who is at least looking objectively at the risks and trying to balance them.
Yes, there will still be a risk that a child could develop Covid after a negative test on the 22/23rd following exposure on the 18th. The majority who are going to develop symptoms would do so by then. I'd probably whip them out of school on the 15/16th, but I'm on the risk averse side of the spectrum. 🙂
A lot families will be weighing up the risks this year.
Happy to see a vaccine starting to get out, but have to say this whole thing is starting to remind me of Resident Evil, hopefully i'm wrong, but 2020 might just be the calm before the storm!
What are the feelings in Wales? Did the 17 day lockdown do its job
Welsh hospital admissions are now shrinking. It worked, as it has in Northern Ireland and Scotland too. Contact restriction reduces transmission and that reduces new infections and trips to hospital.
The Pfizer vaccine result confirms that if you have antibodies against the virus, then there is protection from infection. That's an important finding, but it's not really that unexpected. Why do I say that? Well they benchmarked the neutralizing effects generated in healthy volunteers against serum from people who had recovered - who do not go on to get reinfected rapidly.
publication https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027906 Figure 4 (vs. Human Convalescent Serum HCS)
It is the first RNA vaccine. RNA is very unstable (see all the arguments on PCR tests), so has to be kept VERY VERY cold. Minus 80 cold chain cold. Unless there is a marked change in global cold chain distribution networks, I'd say that this is not the long-term vaccine. But it is proof of concept, and that is important. The spike protein vaccines will be stable at normal temperatures.
I'd also say that the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine is possibly dead in the water based on the preclinical evaluation of the two candidates. But we shall see.
[tl:dr] Vaccine protects 9/10 people against infection for 28 days and proves the concept. A great starting point, but curb your enthusiasm, plenty of hurdles to overcome yet.
So nice to have some good news, even though we all still need to be cautious for a long time yet. FTSE is going through the roof!
Standby for the political maelstrom that will develop over who gets the jabs first.
I’d also say that the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine is possibly dead in the water based on the preclinical evaluation of the two candidates. But we shall see.
Which preclinical evaluation of which two candidates?
I’d probably whip them out of school on the 15/16th, but I’m on the risk averse side of the spectrum. 🙂
A lot families will be weighing up the risks this year.
It's not only risks but balancing whatever punishments they dish out.
I'd expect not only maximising fines but withholding of free meals if kids get taken out of (state) school early.
The Pfizer vaccine result confirms that if you have antibodies against the virus, then there is protection from infection
I haven't been paying much attention, but haven't there been studies to suggest that antibodies in people who have had the virus don't hang around very long - about three months?
So this new vaccine will only provide temporary protection?
Preclinical here
Clinical in the lancet here
Pfizer's vaccine produced sterile immunity in rhesus macaques here providing a much more impressive response than the Oxford candidate.
But clinical might trump preclinical and Oxford vaccine also works fine. That's drug development for you - What. A. Ride. 😉 Duration of protection is yet to be proven. One step at a time.
TiRed - can you possibly expand your thoughts on the Oxford vaccine? I thought we had heard it worked well in producing immune responses across all ages?
Edit ^^^^^ thanks
A quick top of my head thoughts bubble:
If The Pfizer one is better, but hard to transport, why not use that for the most at risk, but use the Oxford one for the mass population at scale?
Thanks - I wondered if you were referring to something new. I'm more optimistic about the Oxford one, but I don't much mind which one(s) work!
Welsh hospital admissions are now shrinking.
@TiRed - is this data publically available? THe Rapid COVID-19 virology page ( https://public.tableau.com/profile/public.health.wales.health.protection#!/vizhome/RapidCOVID-19virology-Public/Headlinesummary ) I've been looking at has admissions for week ending the 1st, that is still showing a rapid rise.
Does that data show hospital admissions? Am I looking at it upside down?
Wales here https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare
Wales count suspected COVID not confirmed, but definitely stable. I don't look at sub regions I'm afraid.
I use Hospital admissions as the gold standard because hospital-seeking behaviour is symptoms based not testing-frequency based.
UPS (amongst others) have been making some pretty big investments in the cold chain facilities required to store and transport vaccines like the Pfizer one. The distribution across US / Europe will presumably be more straightforward than other regions - not least helped by the fact we're coming into the cooler season in the northern hemisphere.
Ta ferrals... I didn't even see the tabs on the webpage.. just went straight into the spreadsheet and checked out the tabs there. Doh! Hopefully it'll look better when the last week goes up on there.
What are the feelings in Wales? Did the 17 day lockdown do its job and was compliance decent?
Did it do it's job? It *seems* to have done, I'm not sure Public Health England publish the same figures, but PHE produce a report daily on infections, deaths, admissions etc.
At a glance, infections are down about 50%-70% over the period just before lock-down and whilst we've had a couple of bad days for Deaths in the 40s, today is a, and I hate to say it, a 'good' day with only 8. However if Wales had a population the same as England and the same number of deaths per population those numbers would be 750ish and 140ish.
As for it's effectiveness compared to it's goal, it's hard to say. Our firebreak, the same as England's isn't there to save lives per-se, it certainly isn't there to try to eradicate Covid, it's about keeping admissions below a level that would mean hospitals would have to cancel electives, or even reach the point when they'd have to triage people with covid and let people who might survive, die, because there wasn't room to treat them, it seems to have done the job.
It's pretty much nailed on that unless there's a fundamental change in Covid thinking because of a Vaccine or a new understanding of 'true figures' because of the Liverpool experiment etc, we can all look forward to something of a Xmas amnesty, followed by another firebreak to get us through to Spring.
As for compliance, it varies massively by region. It's been said in the press that asking the people of Merthyr and RCT to not socialise in each others homes would be like asking them to change their DNA.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54828434
There will always be the 'dickheads' and, there are few people, if any I know who haven't interpreted the rules themselves to break a minor point to do something, but in Cardiff at least it's been pretty well followed. Lots of people driving short distances to go for a walk in the country, or the beach etc, but it's mostly low-risk, outdoors stuff. Our spike was driven almost entirely by the influx of students in September, it seems at least on the face of it, the firebreak came just about at the right time as it was spreading from the Student Community to the larger one.
Can someone clarify for me what 90% effective vaccine means:
a) of those who have the vaccine, 90% are destined to become immune. The 10% are biological wierdos who must rely on societal herd immunity
b) 90% of people get immunity, 10% don't. Totally random, maybe vaccine quality will improve over time
c) effective against 90% of strains/substrains; like the flu vaccine, its a guess at what things are going to be, a few will slip through the net and there will be no defence against them.
d) something else
A great start but not a panacea.
Nor is the influenza vaccine but we've learned to live with that.
not least helped by the fact we’re coming into the cooler season in the northern hemisphere.
Not THAT cold I hope! (-80C is jolly chilly, special freezer chilly).
Can someone clarify for me what 90% effective vaccine means:
A population was given two doses of the vaccine and an equal number were injected with a placebo. Both populations were then followed for 28 days, and the number of people catching COVID was counted. They looked at the data once they had about 100 infections (in about 40k people). What they saw when they counted up those 100 infections, was about 90 who had placebo had caught the infection, but only 10 who had had the vaccine within the 28 days. The split of 10/20000 vs. 90/20000 is VERY unlikely to occur by chance (defined beforehand as 1/20 times or P < 0.05).
So what it does not yet tell us is:
1) What happens after 28 days? Will protection last three months? six months? a year? Trial ongoing
2) What happens to different strains? The 100 people will have their virus genotyped to see
3) What were the characteristics of the 10 who were infected? older? Comorbidities?...
So it really is early days. Vaccine trials are large, but they are small compared to the eventual population size treated.
Nor is the influenza vaccine but we’ve learned to live with that.
But as every repeats ad nauseam - Covid isn't influenza
I had my first visit for the Novavax trial today. Passed all the screening no problem so have had an injection of “something” and a covid test. Seemed very thorough and well organised! Back on the 3rd for round 2 of injections.
An interesting experience to be part of and hopefully one that might do others some good.