COVID- 19

Oxford Biomedica is making it for Astra Zeneca, Oxford Biomedica worked with the University of Oxford during the development phase. They have their own processing suite "OxBox" and they have four suites operational.

Oxbox was originally built to solely service the Group’s growing demand for lentiviral vectors in the fast growing cell and gene therapy market where it is a leading global specialist working with multiple partners including Novartis, BMS and Sanofi. The Oxbox facility was completed at the end of 2019 with the Group expecting to have one or potentially two of the manufacturing suites approved during 2020. In April 2020 the Group joined the Oxford Vaccine Consortium and shortly afterwards signed the first of two agreements with AstraZeneca for COVID-19 vaccine production. By October 2020, the Group had four manufacturing suites approved by the MHRA, three of which were contracted by AstraZeneca and are currently producing bulk vaccine at 1000L scale.

https://www.oxb.com/

They then pass it onto this company

https://www.wockhardt.co.uk/

The UK government has reserved one fill and finish production line for its exclusive use for the next 18 months in order to guarantee the supply of vaccines required to fight COVID-19 in the UK.

I agree with most of that Lovejoy - but this is a very different tone to many of your other posts.

I would say we could just as easily blame austerity on the Labour party (the Labour party I voted for before you suggest I am being political).

Brexit clearly is a factor in the vaccine roll-out. There is much unrest over there re the red tape that has held up their progress. I'm sure this is one of the reasons they are being so aggressive now.

I will take issue re obesity - we are in my wheelhouse now. Let's be really clear - obesity is primarily a factor of diet. In this country we eat crap and drink too much. Yes we need to exercise more - but it has nothing to do with lack of green spaces.

I don't think my views have changed or I've intentionally changed tone but I'll take that on board. In my original post the exercise post was a bit of a stretch but again this isn't UK specific.

If we hadn't left the EU we would still have had the ability to be exactly where we are now, had we chosen to do so. Brexit is not a factor, this is a lie perpetuated by the press looking for anything to show a positive. It's desperate stuff.

I've criticised the Government where appropriate during this pandemic, but their organisation of the research, investment, procurement and roll-out has been absolutely fantastic and world-leading. It deserves huge applause - well done to all involved.

To be fair, their strategy from the start was vaccine, vaccine and vaccine, punctuated by lockdowns to manage deaths in the meantime. This is coming to fruition now.

I believe they've made many mistakes and i favoured more surgical lockdowns, but they are delivering with vaccinations, and then some.

Political partisanship does not improve the situation, but subjective criticism does.

+1

I do smile about what the situation would look like IF Corbyn/Labour had won the General Election and been in power at this time.

Would Piers Corbyn and his Covid-deniers/anti-vaxxers have been spirited away ?!?!

Thanks Neilio for articulating something far better than i could.

We will vaccinate our hamsters before we give spare vaccines to you, Hancock tells EU

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/hea ... 0128204733

THE health secretary has told the EU that British cats, dogs and hamsters will get the vaccine before they consider shipping spares across the channel.

Matt Hancock responded to the EU’s vaccine shortage by promising that every dose of British vaccine would be used on British soil, no matter how wasteful.

He said: “We have left the EU. We owe the EU nothing. These vaccines are British and they will be injected into Britons on British soil to fight the British variant of the coronavirus.

“My countrymen will be having their second dose of the vaccine. They will have a third dose for good measure. If anyone wants a fourth dose, to be broadcast live on the BBC so Europe can see it, they will get one.

“After that, it is the turn of good British pets. Our dogs first, because a faithful canine companion is worth any six Frenchmen, then our cats, then our budgies, tortoises, goldfish and hamsters.

“If we still have vaccines left then it will be the turn of the trees. The steadfast English oak, of course, then the beech and the elm. And after the trees, the insects.”

Emer Cooke, head of the EU Medicines Agency, said: “I explained that without vaccines, the pandemic would continue. He sang ‘Two World Wars and One World Cup’.”

+1

I do smile about what the situation would look like IF Corbyn/Labour had won the General Election and been in power at this time.

Would Piers Corbyn and his Covid-deniers/anti-vaxxers have been spirited away ?!?!

Back to politicising it again, GM. I very much doubt JC would have done worse than the clown in charge right now, we'll never know, so pointless and tendentious criticism. How many deaths do you think Johnson's (lack of timely) responses are responsible for? 20,000, 40,000, 60,000? Remember the Australia example, less than 1,000 deaths with about half our population, look at South Korea. Even Germany with a population a third bigger than us and situated in mainland Europe has around half our number of deaths. We also had about 2 weeks extra time to respond than Europe + we had the advantage of being an island nation so could have secured our borders. Did we, of course not, Johnson was too busy with Brexit, taking holidays and missing the first 5 Cobra meetings to be bothered. And when he did eventually get involved he tried to play the danger down, went around shaking CV patients by the hand and put off doing anything meaningful till late March. We've even got a higher death rate per million population now than the USA and Brazil. By that measure he's worse than Trump and Bolsanaro, some achievement.

+1

I do smile about what the situation would look like IF Corbyn/Labour had won the General Election and been in power at this time.

Would Piers Corbyn and his Covid-deniers/anti-vaxxers have been spirited away ?!?!

Mr Lets not politicise it but wouldn't it have been worse under Corbyn. Hypocrite.

My suspicion is that the health service would have been better funded and equiped to deal with it, at the very least. I doubt the mainstream media would have been as supportive though.

I guess we could all agree that we know each other's positions and move on?

Personally, I'm a little disappointed that the vaccination rates have dropped this week (so far).

I do believe they have dropped as the approach has changed. Targeting the final 20% requires more labour as the vacinators need to go to those house bound. We also need to keep spare capacity in the hope that we can persuade BAME over 80s to have the jab.