Covid

It is worth taking a moment to stand back and applaud Sarah Gilbert and the Oxford vaccine team’s achievement. The data released this evening by Public Health England shows that a single dose of both the Oxford /AstraZeneca vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine cuts the risk of hospitalisation by 80 per cent in the over-80s, the most vulnerable group. It also suggests that the Oxford one, despite its messy trial data, is slightly more effective than the Pfizer vaccine in preventing symptomatic infection among the over-70s. The efficacy of the Oxford vaccine has completely changed the outlook for the UK.

There are two groups in the Jewish community – mainstream Jews who, while still religious, do their best to assimilate into the wider community and the Chareidi, ultra-orthodox Jews who tend to shun British society. Those two groups are now locked in a struggle for the future of the Jewish community. For over 100 years, the Chareidi – with their distinctive costume, based on the fashions of 18th century Poland – have had a sort of symbiotic relationship with the mainstream. If mainstream Jews needed kosher slaughterers, rabbinical judgements, circumcisions and even rabbis for the smaller pulpits, they relied on the Chareidi. They were the ones with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Jewish law.

The UK policy of delaying second doses of the Pfizer vaccine has been criticised by some as risky, with Pfizer warning that there is no data on the effectiveness of its vaccine other than for the dosing regime used in phase 3 trials: two doses, 21 days apart. But evidence is steadily trickling through. Earlier in the week I wrote here about the Scottish population-wide study which found that a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine reduced hospital admissions by 85 per cent between 28 and 34 days after the jab. This morning comes Imperial College’s React-2 study, which paints a picture that is, on the face of it, rather less flattering. It tested 154,000 people for the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19.

With every passing day, more Covid immunity is being gained as hundreds of thousands receive the vaccine. Of course, vaccines take time to mature in the body and offer protection, but with roughly a quarter of the population having now received their first inoculation, our approach to dealing with the virus will inevitably need to shift. The big question is how vaccination has changed the equation for how quickly society can be reopened. Modelling from the PCCF project at Bristol University, on cautious assumptions, suggests that the pace of the vaccine rollout would allow significant reopening with herd immunity achieved in July. First, let’s say how much vaccine immunity has been induced by the vaccine.

Is the British approach of prioritising first doses of Covid vaccines and not promising a second dose until 12 weeks later compromising our ability to fight the disease? It is not a moot point, with several EU figures asserting that it is a risky route to take. As I wrote here a couple of weeks ago, as far as the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine is concerned, what evidence we have supports the practice of delaying a second dose until 12 weeks after the first one; the vaccine is more effective that way. However, a question mark has continued to hang over the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. There is limited data on the most effective dosing regime in this case because the phase 3 trials did not experiment with delayed doses – everyone involved was given a second dose 21 days after the first.

This pandemic has not been short of unexpected twists. Perhaps the most surprising of them all has been Britain’s willingness to close its schools. Boris Johnson’s reasoning for his U-turn in January seemed paradoxical at best: despite judging schools ‘safe’, he closed them anyway. Even more incredibly, the bulk of British parents have been supportive of his decision. On this issue, at least, is it time to take our lead from Europe? While Britain has outpaced Europe in its vaccine roll-out, the attitude towards schooling on the continent has been much bolder than our own. Schools have remained open in both France and Spain throughout the winter, despite both countries experiencing a spike in Covid cases.

There was all this talk about Covid, claiming that chaps who were over seventy and not underweight were vulnerable. I would nod sagely, never thinking that this could apply to me. Like a lot of men, when it comes to physique or romance I have a secret appeal court, to override the harsh judgments of birth dates and the shaving mirror. It assured me that I would not catch Covid.  Yet around the turn of the year, I kept on getting intimations and twinges. Full-blown Covid symptoms? No. Taste? Fine. Smell? Fine. Occasional cough but hardly so you would notice. But I was not happy. Was this plague, or hypochondria? The latter did not seem impossible. I was tested – a brush at the back of the throat variety – and passed, without feeling reassured.