Nordea inkluderer tal for corona-vaccinationerne i sine daglige corona-grafer og konstaterer, at der har været store startvanskeligheder i Europa. Det tyder på en dårlig forberedelse af massevaccinationerne.
Corona update: Introducing vaccination data
The EU has started distributing the vaccine to its members. We take a look at the current (albeit scarce) data, along with the stories that are shaping the corona outlook at the moment.
What is happening right now?
The wide vaccination distribution has started. While the US and UK had somewhat of a head start in the vaccination race, the EU has now started a vaccination distribution process of vaccines.
While that is all fine and dandy, the preparedness among the different EU countries has shown a staggering dispersion. We find that, while everyone has been discussing WHEN the supply of vaccines, a lesser discussion point has been HOW to administer the vaccines on a ‘wide’ scale once the supply is provided.
Belgium apparently spent the first four days setting up the hospitals and letting them master the procedure and France reported only 516 vaccinations in the first week. Not exactly a preparedness to a largely unprecedented pandemic that is applause worthy. Meanwhile Germany had administered more than 300 thousand doses the first week, and Denmark had more or less fully utilized the supply delivered.
New vaccine approvals. The UK approved use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine on the 30th of December, with an expectation of delivering 2m doses per week by mid-january. The EU approved use of Moderna’s vaccine yesterday.
The British variant worry. The UK has seen a surge in cases, and this can largely be attributed to the new strain of corona virus that sparked a lot of international worry before Christmas. The spread of the new variant has put England under a new strict lockdown until mid-February along with worries that this more transmissible variant will lead to more cases in other countries as well.
What about the South African variant? As with the mutation with (apparent) origin in Britain, the South African variant appears to be more transmissible. What is more worrying is that the South African mutation has changes to the spike protein that could change our immune response to the particular variant, which is what the vaccines are designed around and thus there is a risk that our current vaccine efforts are less effective on this new variant.
