2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2660116 20-Feb-2021 16:09

That sounds about right. Japan tsunami happened the same time as Christchurch earthquake. Japanese affected areas were cleared and rebuilt after 1 month. Meanwhile in Christchurch 10 years later...

FineWine

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#2660117 20-Feb-2021 16:13

FineWine:

COVID-19 Tracing App idea

Location based list of Testing Stations with operating times

Maybe also add in Vaccination stations with operating times.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

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#2660177 20-Feb-2021 19:00

Batman: That sounds about right. Japan tsunami happened the same time as Christchurch earthquake. Japanese affected areas were cleared and rebuilt after 1 month. Meanwhile in Christchurch 10 years later...

The population and Government size, and therefore funding slightly differs. Ive been to a dozen cities twice the size of NZ, as have many others Im sure.

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#2660178 20-Feb-2021 19:09

sbiddle:
Geektastic: According to the MoH website it’s going to take a year to vaccinate a population half that of London. Seems a bit leisurely.

This isn't new. The end of Q1 2022 has long been given as the finish date of our vaccine rollout.

It's only been in the last week or so that Hipkins and others have started saying that everybody who wants to be vaccinated will be by the end of the year - but in the same breath still referring to it being a 12 month program.

Remember at this stage the vast majority of the general public aren't going to get the vaccine until August at the earliest - the general public rollout is planned for July onwards, with the first vaccines going to high priority groups.

In the UK they are doing it very quickly, I already know quite a few people who have had it. . If we aren't careful, we are going to be cut off from the rest of the world while they reopen.I think the question is why are we having to wait so long. I guess one advantage is we can see how effective it is and which vaccines work best etc.

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#2660188 20-Feb-2021 19:49

mattwnz:

In the UK they are doing it very quickly, I already know quite a few people who have had it. . If we aren't careful, we are going to be cut off from the rest of the world while they reopen.I think the question is why are we having to wait so long. I guess one advantage is we can see how effective it is and which vaccines work best etc.

Bring cut off from the world when (semi) normality resumes there has been something I've been saying for the last 10 odd months. It's a real reality, and why our MIQ is simply going to implode later this year.

There are no advantages in waiting - the data for the current vaccines is pretty now rock solid.. But most of what NZ will be vaccinated with isn't even in the market yet so clearly we do have to wait for those vaccines to first be approved elsewhere and hit the market before we can then approve them.

As to why NZ won't just but the Pfizer vaccine simply comes down to price, which really has to be the single biggest cop out ever. A single week long lock down will cost more than the vaccines for the whole country.

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#2660189 20-Feb-2021 19:53

One of the problems with the figure of 20-25% who "won't vaccine" being floated around is that number then becomes 40 - 45% of the population. That's when it becomes scary.

Something our media haven't yet cottoned onto yet when they keep referring to the team of 5 million to be vaccinated is that there are currently no vaccines approved for under 16yr olds, and none that are going to be given in the short to medium term. With around 1 million (20%) under 16 that means the total percentage of the population who could be vaccinated this year might only be just over 50% if all of the people who are saying they won't accept a vaccine follow through with that.

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Batman

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#2660198 20-Feb-2021 20:22

Aussie vet nurse in MIQ refusing covid test... Hopefully the stay is self funded

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-woman-kept-in-managed-isolation-after-refusing-covid-19-test/3DXS62OF6P6NAAK7ROX5FRE2BI/

Scott3

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#2660211 20-Feb-2021 21:10

Batman: Aussie vet nurse in MIQ refusing covid test... Hopefully the stay is self funded

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-woman-kept-in-managed-isolation-after-refusing-covid-19-test/3DXS62OF6P6NAAK7ROX5FRE2BI/

Even if it is self funded, Its the flat co-payment rate regardless of length of stay. (and on average the taxpayer picks up half the cost).

The whole thing is a bit weird. In terms of safety, it is just a plastic stick being stuck up your nose. As a non medical person, I would say that it is pretty clear that this is unlikely to case more issues that a sore nose. Re effectiveness, that is not really the concern of somebody being tested in MIQ. For them, approving the test gets them out of MIQ 14 days sooner.

I get the feeling that this person just wanted to cause a stir, and were the one to reach out to the media.

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#2660262 20-Feb-2021 21:58

Scott3:

I get the feeling that this person just wanted to cause a stir, and were the one to reach out to the media.

Another QAnon believer that thought they could get 15 minutes of fame - and the media gave it.

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#2660264 20-Feb-2021 22:06

sbiddle:

One of the problems with the figure of 20-25% who "won't vaccine" being floated around is that number then becomes 40 - 45% of the population. That's when it becomes scary.

Something our media haven't yet cottoned onto yet when they keep referring to the team of 5 million to be vaccinated is that there are currently no vaccines approved for under 16yr olds, and none that are going to be given in the short to medium term. With around 1 million (20%) under 16 that means the total percentage of the population who could be vaccinated this year might only be just over 50% if all of the people who are saying they won't accept a vaccine follow through with that.

If we assumed the R0 of the new strains in an unvaccinated community was 3 (a low estimate I think), and the effectiveness of the vaccine at preventing spread was 0.95 (Unproven assumption that the Pfizer vaccine is as good at preventing spread as it is at preventing symptoms), then we would roughly 70% coverage of our population to get the R0 in our vaccinated community down to 1. In reality we would want to get the R0 quite bit lower than 1 as vaccine distribution won't be even, and the virus (as with measles a couple of years back) could spread rapidly if it ended up in a community with low vaccine uptake.

With roughly 20% of the population being under 16, a roughly 87.5% uptake would be requited from the rest of the community. (some of which will have compromised immune system that cannot get the vaccine, or have strict religious views etc.). Getting such an uptake in under a year is ambitious. Our public health service needs to go all out with this.

I should stress that the above rough calc is optimistic. It is based on a relatively low R0, an unproven assumption regarding the vaccines ability to stop transmission, and sole use of the vaccine we have only ordered 750k courses of.

Regarding the vaccine hesitancy survey's (some of which are quite old). The key thing to note is that the stats are typically of those who are hesitant to get the vaccine, rather than those who are absolutely not going to consent to getting it under any circumstances.

I would expect the numbers of people who are hesitant to drop over the next 8 months. I would guess that the main reason is simply that the vaccine is too new, and they don't want to be the lab rats for it. In say October when the NZ vaccination program has been in full swing for several months, a lot of this hesitance will drop away. Also people tend to put disproportionate weight on personal antidotes. Once you know a few people that have had the vaccine, it will seem less spooky.

The key thing is that true Anti vax people are really rare (but often extremely vocal). The numbers of people who simply can't be bothered or haven't yet got around to it are much higher.

Also people weigh risk and reward. Pritty easy to decide it is safer to opt when you balance the risk of the vaccine with the risk a disease that hasn't been common in NZ for decades. As we saw with the measles outbreak in NZ, the disease turning up tips the risk / reward balance, and people who previously declined the vaccine decide it is not worthwhile getting.

I imagine NZ will at at some point set a date in early to mid 2022 when we are going to take down MIQ, and allow free travel into NZ, and instead rely on our vaccinated community to prevent excessive spread and our hospital system being overloaded. This will be a seriously motivating factor for remaining people to get vaccinated.

Personally I think demand for a covid-19 vaccine will be very robust.

Regarding children, Covid-19 vaccine trials are being undertaken on children. This is for vairious brands, but as an example fizer has fully enrolled a trail with children between 12 and 17 years, and will start another with children aged 5 to 11 towards the end of the year. Hopefully there will be some kids approved vaccines available in the next 6-8 months.

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#2660275 20-Feb-2021 22:37

sbiddle:
As to why NZ won't just but the Pfizer vaccine simply comes down to price, which really has to be the single biggest cop out ever. A single week long lock down will cost more than the vaccines for the whole country.

Supply of Pfizer is very tight and will be for quite some time. Here in Dubai the government has had to strictly ration vaccinations as supply just can't keep up. They are supplying Sinopharm, Pfizer and Astra-zenaca. Pfizer is by far the most supply constrained.

Countries without domestic manufacturing will get it when the manufacturers can supply

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#2660362 20-Feb-2021 23:12

Moderna costs more so supply should be easier?

Scott3

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#2660366 20-Feb-2021 23:58

In terms of our vaccine orders, my calculation a few posts above shows that we need a highly effective vaccine to get herd immunity in the current environment where there is no approved vaccine for kids.

As such, or the 4 brands we have ordered, we pretty much need to cross AstraZeneca and Janssen Pharmaceutica off the list as their vaccines aren't as even close to being as effective as the Pfizer one. I think Janssen are testing their vaccine as a 2 dose rather than one, so might be an option once that testing is done.

That only leaves Pfizer (cira 95% effective), and Novavax (cira 89.3% efficacy). The fourmer we only have 750,000 courses ordered, The latter is yet to be approved.

Of course using trial efficacy as as a proxy for effectiveness at reducing spread isn't ideal.

In terms of wholesale cost (per dose):

Pfizer US$20
Moderna US$32 - 37 (although a more recent 100m dose bulk deal had the price at US$15 each)
AstraZeneca US$3-4
Johnson & Johnson US$10 (Single dose vaccine)

I couldn't find data on Novavax.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/covid-vaccines-how-much-they-cost-whos-bought-them-and-how-theyre-stored.html

https://www.evaluate.com/vantage/articles/news/pricing/moderna-shows-value-bulk-buying

As sbiddle says, the wholesale cost of the vaccines is small fry. NZ$274m for 10m doses of the Pfizer...

For comparison a single week of having Auckland at L3, and the rest of the country at L2 is estimated to cost the economy $440m.

Hopefully supply will start freeing up a bit in a four of five months time, with the combination of existing vaccines having investment in more production facilitates, new vaccines coming online (novavax?), and countries like Israel, UAE & UK getting past the peak of their vaccination programs will free up supply.

Hopefully we can secure more of the the Pfizer vaccines once our current order is filled.

Will be interesting to see what happens in terms of equity if we are concurrently using different brands of vaccines.

@Handle9, how is this handled in dubai? I would imagine the pfizer would be super popular, and the Sinopharm super unpopular.

Do people get allocated one at random, or are they allocated based on risk rating? Can one opt out of Sinopharm, and wait for a better vaccine to become available?

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#2660368 21-Feb-2021 00:20

You can opt for whichever vaccine you like however availability is an issue.
There are some economic incentives here to be vaccinated. In government workplaces if you aren't vaccinated you need a weekly PCR at your own expense, if you are vaccinated this is paid for by the state. Many private employers are following suit. I'd say within a year you won't get a residency visa unless you are vaccinated.

Sinopharm is by far the most widely available and most popular. Pfizer is rare as hen's teeth and Astra-zenaca, which is what I have had, somewhat available. Anecdotally Sinopharm has by far the least side effects. Despite the efficacy of Astra-zenaca being somewhat less effective it is still excellent at mitigating the serious effects of COVID. Anecdotally the newer variants are much nastier and most people want to be vaccinated.

When you are driving into oncoming traffic you aren't too concerned about whether you wear a lap belt or a 5 point racing harness. You put on the seat belt you have available.

Batman

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#2660372 21-Feb-2021 06:48

Handle9: You can opt for whichever vaccine you like however availability is an issue.
There are some economic incentives here to be vaccinated. In government workplaces if you aren't vaccinated you need a weekly PCR at your own expense, if you are vaccinated this is paid for by the state. Many private employers are following suit. I'd say within a year you won't get a residency visa unless you are vaccinated.

Sinopharm is by far the most widely available and most popular. Pfizer is rare as hen's teeth and Astra-zenaca, which is what I have had, somewhat available. Anecdotally Sinopharm has by far the least side effects. Despite the efficacy of Astra-zenaca being somewhat less effective it is still excellent at mitigating the serious effects of COVID. Anecdotally the newer variants are much nastier and most people want to be vaccinated.

When you are driving into oncoming traffic you aren't too concerned about whether you wear a lap belt or a 5 point racing harness. You put on the seat belt you have available.

i'm not sure if that's a good thing: does it means it doesn't do anything. (no side effects = no immune response?)

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