Brexit

[Alby_da_Wolf]

dark_gh0st_b0y said:

JRPGfan said:

UK got alot of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines.... by partly screwing over the EU.

Now it turns out, its only 10% effective against the South African variant of Covid19.

10%!!! thats like nothing.

And to make matters worse, theres now community spread of the South African variant inside the UK.
Another month or two, and it ll probably be the dominant variant, and un-do all the good work the UK did with getting so many vaccinated.

my god, that makes the AZ vaccine literally useless

countries should shift focus to the Pfizer vaccine as well as inverstigating all other vaccines - including Russian and Chinese, while AZ halts production and looks how to upgrade their vaccine

While the vaccine cost is comparable to the others, Pfizer vaccine is horribly expensive to store and ship, due to its very low conservation temperature (the freezers it needs cost one or two orders of magnitude more than a common freezer, and their electricity bill too), any more viable alternative will be welcome.

EnricoPallazzo said:

[...]

Better wait for better analysis about the AZ vaccine. If I'm not wrong it is 10% for mild cases, it is still very viable vs deadly or serious cases.

AZ is already working on a new version of the vaccine which would cover the new variants and it is supposed to be available during autumn. Also I read today that most likely the SA variant will not become the dominant in UK. This will be a vaccine that we will have to take every year probably, updated with the new mutations that will certainly occur.

Now I just dont get why UK just dont shut the borders. It's an island and we should be able to apply the same strategy new zealand and australia applied.

This. Once the vaccination program will go full steam everywhere, then the pandemic will be controllable like seasonal flu ones and even nasty variants will just need to focus more on the protection of people at higher risk.