Vaccines - are we messing up again?

[Workingman]

Right. I didn't get the difference between the April volunteers and the rest. But I think, neither did they.

Oh, they knew alright - same people, same arguments - and so did Guido and the Torygraph, but it makes a good fake news story to run with.

The rest I agree with, apart from the NHS bit. I think that it is civil servants, government and the DHSC that are the problem. They are the ones creating the protocols, rules and laws, and they haven't a clue.

[cromwell]

I think that it is civil servants, government and the DHSC that are the problem. They are the ones creating the protocols, rules and laws, and they haven't a clue.

You might be right. The people who said "We have a stringent recruitment system in place in order to recruit a wide array of individuals from a variety of backgrounds - many of whom are not registered health care professionals" are an outfit called "NHS Professionals", who I have never heard of.

Though in a medical emergency I would have thought that health care professionals would be exactly the kind of people you would want.

[Workingman]

It is NHS Professionals Ltd and is a publicly owned but arms length department of the DHSC and is registered as such (England & Wales no. 6704614). It has its own CEO, Board and management, Policy, Operating Procedures and Terms and Conditions.

Then it all gets very murky.

It claims to be "run by the NHS, for the NHS" but in other documents it says it is working "in partnership with" hospital trusts and that it is the "largest staff bank supplying temporary staff". However, it has been in surplus / profit from the work it does since 2010. In 2014 it was about to be sold for £100m but was kept in house.

I cannot find it listed as any facility, asset or authority operated / owned by the NHS so its claim to be "run" by the NHS is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. It looks more like a Quango than anything else. That's handy for the government when things go pear shaped, eh?

By the way it is nhsp.uk (see how officially NHS that makes them look) who are operating the vaccinator and volunteer programme and all that diversity and equality stuff is part of their "essentials" list before an application can be made.

https://vaccine-jobs.nhsp.uk/vaccinator.html

The blame for the mess lies with these people and the DHSC and not the real NHS.

[cromwell]

So essentially they are some Quangoised staff agency.
That sounds about right.

[Workingman]

From what I was reading it looks to be very much so.

I fully understand that there are times when hospitals etc. need qualified temp staff but instead of NHS trusts going to Reed, Hays, Adecco etc., and paying their exorbitant fees for temps they can go to one single nationwide bank for the staff. They still pay a fee, but not as much.

In normal times it is not such a bad idea, but in a time of crisis it has been shown up to be woefully short and too bureaucratic for what is required.

[cromwell]

OK.
So we just see a hint of sunshine with the news of the Oxford jab.
Then Professor Doom, Chris Whitty, gleefully jumps on it with hob nailed boots.
Oh no, he informs us - there is a vaccine shortage and it will go on for months. This is repeated by Boris Johnson.

Honestly, do they do this on purpose to upset people?

Then the vaccine suppliers say that there isn't a shortage at all!

Honestly, what is going on?

You can see how conspiracy theories start!

[Workingman]

I have just read what Whitty said in his "Letter to the Profession" and the back up it received from Johnson. I then read the strongly worded rebuttals from B/Pf and O/AZ who both say that for the UK there are no problems with either production or distribution.

Given their high public approval ratings I have no reason to doubt the developers and the manufacturers, but I do have plenty of reasons to doubt the others.

[Suff]

Define problems with production? We need 30m doses rtfn and they can deliver 10% right now.

There may not be a "production" problem, but there may be a supply problem to meet our vaccination schedule.

[Workingman]

The O/AZ vaccine is being produced in the UK in a facility in Wrexham with a capacity to produce and distribute 300 million doses each year. It will take it 121days working 24/7 to produce the 100 million doses ordered by the UK = mid April.

I have looked at Gov.uk the BMA and the Royal Colleges of Medicines sites. They have areas that are firewalled to the public and so no one can tell us what the actual weekly capacity for inoculations is. If it is 2 million, as SAGE, NERVTAG and the LSHTM suggest, the new 12 week programme will see us operating the new first dose regime (~25 million) till about late March and the second doses in parallel till late July. If nothing changes a rolling programme to "herd" will be by about Autumn.

We certainly do not need millions of stocks in fridges, rtfn, because we do not have the physical capacity to administer them.

[Suff]

Agreed the capacity to deliver has not been arranged.

Then again, that is faster to ramp up than the production of the vaccines.

There is a HUGE amount of backlash over in the mainland right now about the ability to source and deliver the vaccine. We're not expecting France to be even close to vaccinated until September. People are not happy and want to know why. The certification of the Oxford vaccine is going to be "at least" another month away.

From this side of the channel the UK is moving at warp speed. All I get in the UK press is how crap a job they are doing.

Hard to reconcile.