The COVID-19 Vaccination Progress Thread

[Sheep]

They seem to divide by total population, which means that unvaccinated three-year-olds count against a country's vaccination rate. The ECDC has conflicting, more positive numbers, and I believe that a more reasonable denominator is the reason for that discrepancy.

[ad hoc]

We really seem to have hit a sticking point in the UK.

At least it's a fairly good sticking point. Ours is way worse

[Sporting]

There have been worries about the slowdown of vaccinations in Spain as well, though I think things will pick up after the holiday season.

[Nocturnal Submission]

We need to be honest and say that high profile cases such as this are problematic for the pro-vaccination argument: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796

[Nocturnal Submission]

We need to be honest and say that high profile cases such as this are problematic for the pro-vaccination argument: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796

Though this is probably the best response: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58347434

[gjw100]

At least it's a fairly good sticking point. Ours is way worse

Is that due to a general resistance to the vaccine amongst the population or are we talking widespread social media led idiocy (it's a conspiracy, it's all fake, it's no worse than flu etc, etc)? It's interesting that the half-a-dozen vaccine hold-outs at my wife's care home were all Romanian. I've met most of them at social functions. Lovely people without exception but clearly deluded when it comes to Covid. Anyway, they've all had to toe the line now or lose their jobs. Three have complied, one has moved to London and two back to Romania.

In other news, we have fallen out with our 30-year-old daughter over her refusal to have the vaccine. We haven't spoken to her in about 10 days after she stormed out mid-argument. Unfortunately I'm sure that ours is not the only family similarly divided on the issue.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Sorry to hear that gwj, hopefully things will resolve themselves.

I wish they'd publish the data on the proportions of people who have and haven't been vaccinated catching Covid-19 and ending up in hospital or worse.

[ad hoc]

Is that due to a general resistance to the vaccine amongst the population or are we talking widespread social media led idiocy (it's a conspiracy, it's all fake, it's no worse than flu etc, etc)?

I don't know any more. There's a lot of social media (and word of mouth) idiocy, but I sort of assumed that eventually it would turn around. But it seems that we've hit the end and the end is that 70% of the country don't want to be vaccinated. And I can't think of anything more depressing than that. This country has been my home for 17 years and I've never understood it less than I do now

[Sporting]

But it seems that we've hit the end and the end is that 70% of the country don't want to be vaccinated

That's quite incredible and very depressing.

[ursus arctos]

ad hoc, are there rather significant regional differences?

My friend from Constanta who lives and works in Bucharest says that the situation is better in the capital.

[ad hoc]

I'm not sure where or how to find regional differences. I get the sense that it's more of an issue in rural Romania than in urban, and Romania is a very rural country well all is said and done. But beyond that I don't have the sense that there are massive differences between, say Transylvania and Wallachia. Someone on twitter who responded to my despair said that he thought it was deep and abiding mistrust of the state since the days of Ceausescu, and that's his sense of what's behind it. Not sure if that would explain it all, but I sort of need to have something to make sense of it

[ad hoc]

This Euronews piece is 2 months old, but sort of lays out some of the reasons https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/08/...ccessful-start

[ursus arctos]

Thanks

Sounds like the perfect storm in many ways

[elguapo4]

The last hold out amongst my friends and family got her second jab on Saturday. A friends wife, she started doing " research " online, and some moron or morons convinced her that it would exacerbate an existing condition she suffers from. I reminded her that I suffer from the same condition and didn't have any problems. Thankfully sense finally prevailed.

[ad hoc]

Back on the subject of low take up in Romania and Bulgaria, this piece is in today's FT https://www.ft.com/content/9be0faed-...0-95c69c66b276

[Antepli Ejderha]

Back on the subject of low take up in Romania and Bulgaria, this piece is in today's FT https://www.ft.com/content/9be0faed-...0-95c69c66b276

Behind a pay wall for me.

[ad hoc]

Hmm, it is for me now too. Wasn't earlier

[ad hoc]

Ok I did the incognito mode trick

Vaccine scepticism is helping to keep Romania and Bulgaria’s Covid-19 vaccination rates the lowest in the EU, exposing the union’s poorest nations to higher risks amid a fourth wave of the pandemic fuelled by the contagious Delta coronavirus variant.

Fraud is adding to official frustration in Romania over take-up rates, with instances of doctors allowing people to go without jabs while still issuing them with certificates that help to make it easier to work and travel.

“A lot of people have postponed their vaccination until now,” Ioana Mihaila, Romania’s health minister, told the Financial Times. “We understand their concerns and it’s their right to do research about all the vaccines and make an informed decision, but now it’s the time to make this decision as the risk of getting infected will surge.”

Gindrovel Dumitra, the president of the vaccination group at the National Society of Family Medicine, told the FT that patients indeed often ask for the paper but not the jab. Those few doctors who do not resist endanger all of society, he said.

Among doctors implicated in such “sink vaccinations” — so-called in Romania because the vaccine ends up down the drain — is a physician suspected of issuing fake certificates for her husband’s football team, which then went on to play in tournaments, the Digi24 channel reported. It is not clear whether any infections resulted from that incident, but Romanian media have reported on other infections where patients carried fake vaccination certificates.

“Vaccination [going into] the sink and issuing documents based on such a procedure is [illegal] but it is also about medical liability,” Dumitra said. “An unvaccinated person can get sick, [and] endanger not only his own health but also that of others.”

Andrei Baciu, vice-president of the National Coordinating Committee for Vaccination Activities against Covid-19 (CNCAV), estimated that there had been more than 400 fake cases out of more than 2m certificates issued.

Other estimates are higher, with some doctors saying every vaccination site in the country has received patients trying to get paperwork without jabs.

Just over a quarter of Romania’s eligible citizens have received full vaccinations, the second-lowest take-up rate among EU countries behind Bulgaria’s 17 per cent, according to the FT’s vaccine tracker. Both are also far behind EU peers in data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). All other EU countries have vaccinated at least half of their populations.

Officials in Romania and Bulgaria put the low rates down to a rural and less educated population, snags in vaccine deliveries and a general mistrust of medicine, exacerbated by online fake news.

“Initially I did not trust the vaccine and I wanted to wait to see how people react to it,” said a 51-year-old Romanian who gave his name as Alin, citing ambiguous information about the use, side effects and efficacy of various vaccines. “I read absolutely all pros and cons . . . I wouldn’t get vaccinated, I don’t want to introduce something not tested enough in my body. ”

Romania and Bulgaria both have recorded quickly rising case numbers, with daily new cases rising to about 1,500 in each country by early September, the highest level since early May.

Both countries suffered badly during the third wave of infections in the spring, when central and south-eastern European countries were among the highest in the world for deaths per capita. Case numbers plummeted in the summer, putting people at ease again.

“They seemed to believe that we had overcome the pandemic,” Bulgarian chief state health inspector Angel Kunchev acknowledged in an email interview with the FT, adding that the government had been working hard to try to motivate everyone to get vaccinated. “The immunisation coverage that we have is not satisfactory,” Kunchev said.

Bulgaria started its vaccination drive slowly this year, centring its purchases on Oxford/AstraZeneca shots, which were cheaper and easier to store. It bought far fewer messenger RNA vaccines than it was allotted under the EU’s purchase scheme — a strategy that backfired when AstraZeneca deliveries suffered setbacks.

Kunchev says fear of being vaccinated is being exacerbated by fake news on social media but adds that as the school year starts, people begin to realise that the pandemic is not over.

“I think we can handle it,” he said. “We also have experience from previous waves of the pandemic. In recent weeks we have seen an increase in the number of people willing to be immunised and I believe we can talk about a tendency.”

Romania has tried to make it as easy as possible to be vaccinated, with jabs available on-demand on presentation of an ID at a vaccination site. Warehouses are so well stocked that the country even offered South Korea an emergency shipment of 1.5m doses of mRNA vaccines.

Health minister Mihaila said the government would deliver vaccines to patients’ doors and even offer prizes as incentives. “In big cities, where transmission rates are always higher, the overall vaccination rate is [already] about 50 per cent,” she said. “Each vaccinated person counts.”

[Sam]

Just mentioned in the main pandemic thread, but the City of Buenos Aires passed 50% of its total population double-jabbed today, making it the second jurisdiction in the country to do so (La Pampa province, which has about one tenth of the population, being the first). Tomorrow just north of 100,000 doses of Pfizer will be arriving in the country; they'll be used as second doses for some people who've had a first Sputnik V dose and are still waiting, and to jab kids with comorbidites. Argentina is now up to 37.55% with two doses and is banging just over 240,000 second doses into people's arms each day (that's the seven-day average). Which is just over 0.5% of the population each day, I reckon (given a population of about 45 million).

[Sporting]

Here, 75% of 12-19 year olds have received at least one dose and around 40% have been doubly jabbed. There have been very few cases of protesting parents or reluctant adolescents.

[San Bernardhinault]

And perhaps not coincidentally, Spain’s Delta Wave seems to have completely collapsed - very quickly - in a dissimilar way to what has happened in the UK and US.

[Sam]

Booked in for my second dose. It seems we're in between deliveries of AstraZeneca at the moment, because on Friday I shall be getting off my face on Pfizer instead. I can look forward to yet more side effects and 'a potent immune response' developing thereafter. Not my words; the words of Nature.com.

[Antepli Ejderha]

I posted on the Covid-19 thread but we're becoming a vaccination centre for the day to vaccinate 12-15 year olds. After speaking to some of my students I think that only about 10% will be getting the vaccination. The lack of education about this really worries me.

[Sam]

Yikes. Here's hoping you just happened to speak to all the ones who aren't getting it, and that absolutely everyone you didn't speak to is going to get it.

[ursus arctos]

It is quite distressing

I don't see the point of using the school as a centre if it isn't going to do anything to encourage the students to be vaccinated