Category Archives: Vaccines and immunisation

Australia news live: no new local Covid cases in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, while southern states hit by heatwave

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Late February Pfizer vaccine rollout planned. Meanwhile, South Australian authorities warn residents as bushfires erupt in Adelaide Hills. Follow all the latest updates, live

• NSW hotspots; Queensland hotspots
• State-by-state restrictions and lockdown rules explained
• Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for Australian rollout
• Follow the global coronavirus liveblog

A truck carrying toilet paper has burst into flames, causing traffic chaos on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway.

It is still unclear what caused the fire, but firefighters are on the scene, attempting to bring the fire under control.

The truck exploding into flames on the Eastern Freeway, Melbourne near the Elgar Rd exit. I saw this while passing by and hope no one is hurt. The fire is now out but traffic is banked up on the city-bound lane. A terrible incident on a 40c day. #truckOnFireMelbourneFreeway pic.twitter.com/tj5MANXAQh

The Bureau of Meteorology has said the heatwave is over in Melbourne and is easing in South Australia, with rain and thunderstorms expected later this evening.

Dean Narramore, a senior meteorologist at the BoM, warned that the focus will shift to New South Wales tomorrow, with temperatures forecast to get near 40C in Western Sydney, with the city expecting to reach 35C.

But by tomorrow night the cool change will have moved across all of south-eastern Australia and temperatures will return to near seasonal averages for the rest of the week.

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Uncertainty over 12-week Covid jab interval intensifies as UK rollout expands

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More vaccination centres open as experts call for monitoring of effect of lengthy gap between jabs

Experts have called for greater clarity about the monitoring in place to assess the 12-week dosing interval for Covid vaccines, as the UK’s vaccination programme ramps up.

According to government data released on Sunday, a total of 6,353,321 people in the UK have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine. A further slew of vaccination centres are due to open on Monday to speed up delivery of the jabs.

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UK vaccine adviser says delay of Covid second dose will save lives

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JCVI deputy chair defends extended gap between jabs as Hancock warns end of restrictions ‘long way off’

A representative of the UK’s vaccine advisory committee has defended its decision to delay giving people a second dose, saying it will “save many lives”, as the health secretary, Matt Hancock, warned lifting restrictions was “a long, long way off”.

Prof Anthony Harnden, of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said the evidence was still in favour of delaying the dose, after a small Israeli study on people over the age of 60 suggested a first dose gave just 33% protection from coronavirus.

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I’ve had my first vaccine jab. It gives me hope of liberation… but not yet

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Exactly a year after his first story about coronavirus, our science editor received the Pfizer injection last week. Here he reflects on a remarkable scientific achievement

I marked a grim anniversary in an unexpected manner last week. On 18 January last year, I wrote my first story about a mysterious disease that had struck Wuhan, in China, and which was now spreading around the world. More than two million individuals have since died of Covid-19, almost 100,000 of them in the UK.

Remarkably, 12 months to the day that the Observer published my story, I was given my first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, allowing me to follow nearly six million other newly immunised UK residents who are set to gain protection against a disease that has brought the planet to a standstill. It was a rare, comforting experience after a year of unremitting sadness and gloom.

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Doctors call for shorter gap between Pfizer Covid vaccine doses in UK

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British Medical Association warns current 12-week wait could reduce effectiveness of the jab

The gap between the first and second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine must be reduced to ensure the vaccine is effective, senior doctors have warned.

Currently patients wait about three months to get their second dose. Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said this was a “public health decision” to get the first jab to more people across the country.

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Data on Covid infections in England suggests cautious approach best

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Some survey results show that the overall picture might not be as rosy as implied by others

A quick glance at the government’s coronavirus dashboard might be fuel for optimism. But new data suggests the picture may not be so rosy.

According to the dashboard, the number of people testing positive for Covid is falling: 37,892 positive tests were reported on Thursday, compared with 62,322 on 6 January. Cases by specimen date show similar trends.

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World’s poor need action, not Covid ‘vaccine nationalism’, say experts

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Nations outbidding each other creates an ‘immoral race towards the abyss’

Pharmaceutical companies should do more to transfer vaccine technology to prevent the poorest countries falling behind in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, according to an expert.

The warning came from Dag-Inge Ulstein, the co-chair of the global council trying to speed up access to Covid vaccines for the world’s poor, known as the Act (Access to Covid-19 Tools) Accelerator. Ulstein, Norway’s international development minister, oversees the drive to ensure vaccines reach the poor – the Covax programme.

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I’m in a UK Covid vaccine trial – should I also accept a ‘real’ jab?

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My turn for an AstraZeneca dose has come up, so I need to decide whether to drop out of Novavax tests

I had two excellent pieces of news this week. They left me feeling utterly wretched.

First, my turn came up for the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid. I was told I could have my first jab on Thursday.

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Indian hesitancy sets back world’s biggest Covid vaccination drive

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Low uptake fuelled by fears over safety of vaccine and spread of misinformation

India’s Covid-19 vaccine drive has been hampered by turnout as low as 22% in some states, as fears over the safety of the vaccine and the spread of misinformation has fuelled widespread hesitancy.

On Saturday, India launched the world’s largest vaccination programme as it began the massive task of vaccinating its 1.3 billion citizens against coronavirus.

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Single Covid vaccine dose in Israel ‘less effective than we thought’

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Surge in infections dampens optimism over country’s advanced immunisation programme

Israel’s coronavirus tsar has warned that a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be providing less protection than originally hoped, as the country reported a record 10,000 new Covid infections on Monday.

In remarks reported by Army Radio, Nachman Ash said a single dose appeared “less effective than we had thought”, and also lower than Pfizer had suggested.

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EU’s Covid vaccination debacle is down to institutional inflexibility

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Supply delays underline there was no legal or economic justification for central planning

A storm is raging over the EU’s failure to have ordered more of the approved Covid-19 vaccines ahead of time. Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of the US pharmaceutical company Moderna, which gained approval for its vaccine shortly after Pfizer/BioNTech, claims that the EU has relied too much on “vaccines from its own laboratories”.

Did the European commission prioritise supporting its own pharmaceutical industry over protecting human lives? In fact, matters are not as simple as that. Contrary to what Bancel wants us to believe, the EU has actually ordered too little of its own vaccine. After all, the vaccine that is being administered most widely across the west was developed by a German company, BioNTech, and thus comes from the EU (though it was tested and partly produced in partnership with Pfizer in the US and with Fosun Pharma in China).

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Covid-19: how do you tweak a vaccine?

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The emergence of more infectious variants of Sars-CoV-2 has raised questions about just how long our vaccines will remain effective for. Although there is little evidence that the current vaccines won’t work against the new variants, as the virus continues to mutate scientists are preparing themselves for having to make changes to the vaccines in response. Speaking to Dr Katrina Pollock, science correspondent Linda Geddes asks how we can tweak the vaccines against new variants, and how likely it is we’ll end up in a game of cat and mouse with the virus

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Vaccine inequity puts world on brink of ‘catastrophic moral failure’, says WHO chief – video

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The head of the World Health Organization has warned that as coronavirus vaccines are rolled out, the world faces a 'catastrophic moral failure' as richer countries administer the vaccine on a vast scale, while poor countries are left behind. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus highlighted that millions of doses had been given in higher-income countries while one of the world's poorest countries had administered only 25 doses

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WHO: just 25 Covid vaccine doses administered in low-income countries

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Director-general warns of ‘catastrophic moral failure’ if richer countries hoard treatment

The world is on the edge of a “catastrophic moral failure” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, with just 25 doses administered across all poor countries compared with 39m in wealthier ones, the head of the World Health Organization has said.

It was the sharpest warning so far from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus about the dangers of vaccine hoarding since inoculations started being administered in 49 mostly high-income countries.

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London to start trialling first 24-hour Covid vaccination centres in January

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Nadhim Zahawi says over-70s being invited for jabs and hints teachers could be prioritised in next phase

The first 24-hour vaccination centres will be piloted in London before the end of January, the UK’s vaccines minister has said.

Nadhim Zahawi said that by the beginning of February the scheme would be under way in hospitals in the capital and also pledged that 50 large vaccination centres would be open. He said that at present about 140 people a minute were being vaccinated against Covid-19.

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Bolsonaro rival hails Covid vaccinations as ‘triumph of science against denialists’

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São Paulo governor João Doria takes aim at Brazil’s president after his state beat federal authorities to secure first coronavirus vaccines

Brazil’s first Covid-19 vaccine has been administered after more than 209,000 deaths, sparking an outpouring of emotion and a ferocious political skirmish that saw one of President Jair Bolsonaro’s key rivals accuse him of revelling in the “stench of death”.

The China-made CoronaVac was injected into the arm of a frontline nurse in São Paulo at 3.30pm local time, after Brazil’s health regulator approved the emergency use of vaccines produced by China’s Sinovac and Oxford/AstraZeneca.

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‘We are worried’: Indians hopeful but anxious as vaccination drive begins

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India launches bid to vaccinate 300m people amid fears over efficacy of domestically produced vaccine

Emerging from Holy Family hospital in New Delhi, Ram Verma, a sanitation worker, breathed a deep sigh of relief. As one of the first in India to receive a coronavirus vaccine on Saturday – marking the start of the world’s largest vaccination programmes – he had been feeling a little jittery.

“I must admit I was nervous,” said Verma, who had received his Covaxin jab in a centre set up in the hospital car park. “A lot of us were. I thought I might faint or have side-effects. After all, it is something totally new. But I’m fine. There is nothing to worry about.”

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First fruits of vaccine rollout ‘should be seen in weeks’

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Experts agree that the impact of the jab will vary regionally and among different groups

Analysts are involved in an urgent effort to gauge the impact of Britain’s mass Covid-19 vaccine campaign and to pinpoint dates when lockdown measures can be eased.

More than 3 million people – most of them elderly or vulnerable individuals or health workers – have already been given jabs. Now researchers are trying to establish when the first fruits of the mass vaccination programme may be seen as the government heads towards its target of immunising more than 13 million people by 15 February.

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Covid vaccine: 72% of black people unlikely to have jab, UK survey finds

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Sage voices concern at BAME uptake and says more must be done to increase trust in vaccine

Advisers from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have raised fresh concerns over Covid vaccine uptake among black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (BAME) as research showed up to 72% of black people said they were unlikely to have the jab.

Historical issues of unethical healthcare research, and structural and institutional racism and discrimination, are key reasons for lower levels of trust in the vaccination programme, a report from Sage said.

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Vaccine passports: what are they and do they pose a danger to privacy?

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Race to build app for people to demonstrate Covid jab or a negative test, but rights groups worry about ‘identity checks’

Vaccine passports, which would allow people with immunity to Covid to prove they were at low risk of spreading the disease, are being investigated by companies and countries around the world. But the proposals have also raised fears among critics that they could underpin an oppressive digital ID system, and put sensitive medical records in the hands of authorities and employers.

Despite the name, a vaccine passport is not a piece of paper; instead, in the most developed versions of the idea, it is an app or similar system that can prove the bearer has been vaccinated, tested positive for Covid antibodies, or recently received a negative test. There would be no need to build and operate a privacy violating centralised database.

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