Talk:COVID-19 vaccination in the United Kingdom

How to expand the lead

As part of page curation, a hatnote (or maintenance tag) has been added to the page alerting us to an issue with the brevity of the lead and that it may not adequately summarise the rest of the article. It's not immediately obvious how the lead should be expanded. I thought we could start a discussion here as to how best to do this. Looking at the other sections and subsections, it will not be easy to summarise the information. I was wondering whether more of an overview should be taken where something could be said about the different bodies involved in vaccine deployment. It can't all just fall under the auspices of Minister for COVID Vaccine Deployment, it seems to draw from a number of places, including Public Health England. There's also an issue of ensuring that the lead reflects the whole of the UK, and not just the relevant bodies in England.

The MHRA are much more involved than they may seem, also I believe NIBSC to be involved in initial batch testing: "The National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, part of the agency, has been and will continue doing, independent laboratory testing so that every batch of the vaccine meets the expected standards of safety and quality.". NIBSC are also involved in testing coronavirus vaccines globally, but this is not as relevant.

Also, there's the Vaccine Taskforce (UK) which are also involved, in a more overarching way. This article in The Guardian provides a perspective from the UK Vaccine Taskforce and states the following: "NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE&I) and Public Health England are leading on the operational delivery of the vaccination programme in England." These details might help expand the lead by writing a few sentences about the various bodies involved. There are clearly more moving parts than first meets the eye. The article mentions the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation further down the page, but they should perhaps be mentioned in the lead too. This PDF contains a lot of useful information, some of it slightly out-of-date though.

The BMA also appear to be involved with what they term "CVP" (COVID-19 vaccination programme) in England. This group letter from NHS (Skipton House) also sheds light on the 3 defined deployment models as at 20 November 2020 and also gives two key names: Emily Lawson, Chief Commercial Officer and SRO for Covid-19 Vaccine Deployment NHS England and NHS Improvement; and Sue Harriman, Chief Operating Officer Covid-19 Vaccination Deployment Programme. I hope these links help in some way to produce more of an overview of the bodies involved. SpookiePuppy (talk) 20:23, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@SpookiePuppy: Sorry, didn't see this before I have made the first attempt of re-writting the lead see here. Many thanks for your many insights and I am happy to bow to consensus of better wording! P.S. I have removed the tag, I can put it back on if not properly resolved yet? Thanks. --Crep1711 (talk) 21:28, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Roll-out numbers

These are quoted form the press but my calculations are about 28 million for the 1st phase (vs. 30m in the table). While my estimate may be wrong also, I suspect there is a double count of 1.5 to 2 million. The source clearly did not allow for people appearing in more than one category, as the age group data matches the ONS data exactly. Wayne (talk) 13:42, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks @Wayne: for raising this and for this edit on the article in an attempt to clarify. I have been thinking about this too as I spotted this alternative metric from the BBC (as it is freely accessible rather than a subscription source). However, the figures do vary, especially the 16-64 underlying health conditions row. I was half hoping the government may publish some sort of commissioned study. However, what do others think? If this is such a grey area, maybe we shouldn't go down the speculative numbers route? Or a simpler disclaimer, as per the BBC source, underneath the table? Do more editors have suggestions? Thanks. --Crep1711 (talk) 18:15, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

I had added a disclaimer in the text above - could put it below. Wayne (talk) 16:38, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

New government document: UK COVID-19 vaccines delivery plan

Lots of information in this new government document, published yesterday, 11 January. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:34, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks @MichaelMaggs: most appreciated. I haven't had a chance to go through it yet but will do so soon. In fact there are loads of different snippets of info / updates I want to do but struggling for time to keep up. Hope, perhaps, to have a bit of a blitz soon. Many thanks for your continued support. --Crep1711 (talk) 08:53, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Phase 2 info out of date?

It seems the plan has changed. This BBC News article tells us the new plan is that Phase 2 will be age groups 40-49, 30-39 and 18-29 in that order. This has been reflected on Omni Calculator. However, I can't seem to find anything about the new plan on gov.uk.... — Smjg (talk) 13:39, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I've updated it using the JCVI interim report. ArcMachaon (talk) 23:12, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Kate Bingham sets out UK vaccine approach

This is a useful article where Kate Bingham discusses the UK vaccine procurement etc. Might be useful for this page. https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/02/07/news/kate_bingham_interview_vaccines_covid_astrazeneca_uk_coronavirus_johnson-286384093/ Jopal22 (talk) 18:43, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Adult population vs. actual population

I've noticed that every other country pretty much measures percentage based on the total population of the country, yet you have the adult population listed. I attempted to change this in an edit a while ago but it was reverted. I think some discussion should be generated about this. CaffeinAddict (talk) 04:45, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I believe by default most countries pages are doing based upon total population, since it's easier to calculate. I changed this because the vaccine is not approved for children, it would not be a useful metric at all to have a total population number used for vaccines if anyone below 16 is unable to get them it would give a distorted picture of the programme. Also, the doses reported and percentages should match the government figures, which they wouldn't if total population is included (specifically the percentages). Personally, I would keep it like this until the vaccine is approved for adolescents etc, but there should be some more voices on here before any more decisions made. Haroony213 (talk) 12:36, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Vaccines are approved for people aged 16+. The gov.uk page gives the percentage of people aged 18+ who have had first and second doses. In my view, what we really should be giving is the percentage complete the vaccination programme is. If I'm not mistaken, this is the UK's COVID-19 vaccination programme, not the UK's COVID-19 adult vaccination programme specifically, and as such all ages would naturally be offered the jab once vaccines are approved for them. Therefore, the percentage complete would be the percentage of the total population who have had the jab (or explicitly declined to have it; this is before you consider people deemed medically unfit, which would open a new can of worms). However, it seems we don't have the required data to do this – see my comment below – and so the best we can do is just show the percentages given on the gov.uk page, which are percentages of adults who have been vaccinated. — Smjg (talk) 11:36, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Currently, the percentage figures in the infobox are being done as calculations. There are three problems with this:

• The percentages are being given as percentages of adults who have been vaccinated, but they're being calculated using the total numbers of first and second doses given, which count children (at the moment, these are 16- and 17-year-olds classed as clinically vulnerable, plus any under 16s given a vaccine as exceptional cases if there are any) and adults alike.
• Where is the total size of the adult population being taken from, and how is this being kept up to date? Looking at the page history, it would appear the answer to the latter question is "it isn't". People are reaching adult age every day, and people are dying every day (and not just from COVID). (In normal circumstances, there'd also be migrations to consider.)
• Even if we had up-to-date figures for both of these which count only the adults, we would still need to exclude from the counts those who have had one or both doses and since died, but we don't seem to have any figures for this.

As such, we don't have the necessary data to do calculations for this. As such, I'm going to amend it to just give the percentages from the government page. — Smjg (talk) 11:16, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the points, for the fact that some 16-17 and children may be vaccinated, I agree it is just simpler to use GOV.uk percentages. I was the one who changed it from total population to adult, and the formula for percentage was already there, I essentially revered the percentages given by the GOV.uk ones to get an adult base population number and used that as what to divide by in the formula. In retrospect, I should've just presented what's on GOV.uk instead of calculating. One point I would raise is that only the Pfizer vaccine is approved for over 16s (thereby being the only given to 16/17 so not all are like you said), and, the current target of the programme is to vaccinate adults and a few children (16s/17s and younger special cases), when the vaccine is approved for younger people, we should change accordingly. But the current target is the immunisation of adults (mainly). If we're looking really long term, yeah sure, it is the COVID-19 immunisation programme in the UK for everyone.

If its worth anything, the percentage that was calculated before you changed it matched the GOV.uk dashboard, but would be rounded up/down by default, but mostly matched the dashboard when I updated it. Haroony213 (talk) 03:02, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

(arbitrary break)

Just touching base on the discussion I generated here. Because Deployment of COVID-19 vaccines calculates percentage of total population, it seems to make sense in a worldview of the subject rather than the UK only view. For the record, I'm Canadian and started the COVID-19 vaccination in Canada article. We've recently approved the use of Pfizer for people as young as 12. With exception of a few local metrics (for example the City of Toronto), most of our sources don't calculate percentage of adult population vaccinated (and when they do they include the general population as well). But these are skewed now because it counts adults as 18+ when we are now beginning to vaccinate 12+. I think in the grand scheme of things it is a better metric to calculate total population as it is likely that the UK will follow suit and approve vaccine for children as well. Anyway that's my two cents. CaffeinAddict (talk) 17:01, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Doses actually delivered

It seems to be difficult to obtain the breakdown by vaccine type delivered. I have to say, I'm getting mighty tired of the false equivalence of "fully vaccinated". Each vaccine has a different effectiveness level against different COVID strains, depending upon dosage history and time elapsed.

We're going to need to take a far more nuanced view of this going forward—refracted through final vaccine uptake, down to the granularity of major subpopulations—to see where the cookie crumbles on "openness" for different countries and regions.

Right now, ten minutes of focused Google search did not determine the ratio of Pfizer to AZ shots delivered in the UK to my satisfaction. What I seemed to discover is that at some recent point in time, actual deliveries from the drug companies were 2:1 in favour of AZ of Pfizer (this only loosely correlates over short spans of time with jabs delivered to the population).

Here on Wikipedia, this article fails to moot that this distinction is important, as it rushes to tabulate "one" against "two" in glorious technicolor. 50% worthless, as I happen to believe that one dose of Pfizer (or the mRNA twins more generally) might be as effective as two doses of another vaccine, depending upon the strain in circulation, and the health status (mainly age) of the recipient.

In the UK, the 617 variant is now on the upswing, as a first-dose coverage rate about the same as Canada. But I'm not sure this will happen in Canada, where one dose of Pfizer is the norm by far, despite the UK's vast superiority in 2nd doses delivered. 617 is the main lingering threat to whether Western society is mostly open for business as usual come the autumn, or hunkering down to avert yet another wave, as some booster shot of slightly different composition is hastily brewed for rapid deployment.

We need to stop pretending that all vaccines are created equal PDQ, if we're going to track this development with any cognitive nuance moving forward from our present circumstance in early summer. — MaxEnt 18:17, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Actual Protection

The actual effectiveness of the Covid vaccination can be found by the Yellow books Yellow books

As of the 9th June 2021 the following number of people have sadly died of Covid-19 in the UK whilst vaccinated. For both Pfizer and AstraZeneca the numbers are very low. It also does not take into account the total number of people vaccinated with each vaccine or the health or age of the vaccinated.

Should this be included in the main page?

Caption: Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine adverse reactions - Fatality by vaccine type

Reaction Name	Pfizer	AstraZeneca
COVID-19	32	23
COVID-19 pneumonia	12	7
Suspected COVID-19	1	0

--AncientArk (talk) 09:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Weekly Figures Table

The article includes a weekly figures table which runs to 21 March 2021. I feel this either needs to be

a) removed from the article b) brought up to date, or c) replaced with a more useful graphic of vaccine figures

Currently it's just incomplete information. I'm not sure it actually adds very much to the article so would appreciate thoughts on this.

Thanks