If not now, when? Boris Johnson’s grand reopening must be buttressed with a shorter waiting gap for second doses
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“It is only thanks to the vaccine program, we are able to take these cautious steps, but to take these steps, we must be cautious and we must be vaccinated, so please, get that jab,” Boris Johnson cried from the podium of Downing Street yesterday.
It was not, as the Prime Minister had once promised, a grand reopening, a declaration of freedom from the pandemic. Instead, it was an almost downbeat acceptance he could not go back on his promise of relaxing all legal Covid restrictions, played to the tune of Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty’s insistent warnings of an “exit wave”.
It was Sajid Javid who delivered a hopeful note: between 7.5 and 8.9 million infections have been avoided thanks to the vaccine program. By next Monday, July 19, when all rules will be dropped, two thirds of Britain’s adult population will have had a second dose of the vaccine.
In the meantime, however, there is a risk we could see 4,800 hospitalisations a day within weeks and 100-200 deaths a day. Even for a country which has weathered a huge tragedy during the pandemic, these are sobering numbers.
The only real, sustainable protection is the vaccine, sang all sides of the scientific and political community yesterday. Two doses of the vaccine prevents symptomatic infections by 78 to 80 per cent, while one dose only cuts it by a little over a third. Protection from hospitalisation is even higher, at between 91 and 98 per cent for fully vaccinated people.
Yet, those who are most likely to be driving the bulk of cases of the “exit wave” are the very same who have not yet had a second vaccine: young people understandably keen to return to work and life.
Many, desperate to have the privilege afforded to most older Britons, began turning up at vaccine centres after the minimum 21 day period for the Pfizer jab, or 28 for Moderna to try their luck. Vaccine clinics with spare doses obliged.
Millennials, much maligned for their laziness, were so keen to do their bit they poured onto a Reddit thread to spread the word of where people could get a hold of a second vaccine. In other words, an internet forum was doling out more useful information than the Department for Health.
The Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunization (JCVI) still mandates an eight week gap between both doses of the vaccine. The reasoning behind the prolonged wait period, initially 12 weeks at the start of the rollout, was to try and give as many vulnerable people a first dose as soon as possible, while supply was still a massive challenge.
Now, however, it is clear there is an abundance of vaccines to go around and staff giving out the jab are best placed to be able to tell if they have enough doses to give young people a second dose early without jeopardising the rest of the rollout.
After the prevalence of the practice emerged, however, local clinics were scolded by the NHS trusts for allowing people to skip the queue. Because, in typical fashion, decision-making was stripped of those most qualified to make the call, and handed back to bureaucrats blinkered by a need to follow the “rules” rather than use that British common sense we’ve heard so much about.
Even France, hardly the beacon of expediency, announced it would shorten the gap between doses to between three and seven weeks, in an effort to get ahead of the Delta variant. In the US, where cases are slowly rising but far from taking off, people are able to get the vaccine after three or four weeks depending on which inoculation they were given.
The benefits of doing so are plentiful, allowing our further reopening to be safer. Industries most at risk of spreading Covid, such as nightclubs, will be more protected, our borders and our travel industry will be able to reopen sooner, tourists will be able to return to our mostly-vaccinated cities, and the risk of both a catastrophic exit wave or winter bounceback, would be reduced.
Instead of solid decision-making at the top of government, we have twenty-something year olds making spreadsheets of clinics defying the health services’ orders.
If not now, when? The Prime Minister asked yesterday as he justified his reopening.
When will vaccine clinics be released from an arbitrary bind preventing them from making decisions that would help the country? When will young people, who are amongst those most likely to end up back in lockdown-by-default from self isolation, be allowed to do what we’ve asked them to do, and get the jab?
If not now, when?