Vaccine

How concerned should we be by the Indian variant?

In recent weeks there has been a lot of new-found optimism in Britain with regards to Covid: case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths have dramatically fallen and the vaccine roll out continues at pace. The virus has now been overtaken as the main cause of death in England and Wales for the first time since autumn. But the pandemic continues to grow, and nowhere more so is this the case than India. Its hospitals are overrun. Crematoriums are overwhelmed and the first of nine planes from Britain set off on Sunday night to provide oxygen, ventilators and aid. Why should it be surging now? One of the theories behind this explosion

How Britain can really help India tackle its Covid crisis

India’s Covid situation is dire: hospitals have run out of beds (some hospitals are treating patients in cars), people are turning to the black market for drugs and oxygen cylinders, and mass cremations are taking place in car parks. The official daily death toll is around 2000, but the likely reality is much, much higher. Britain has offered to help by sending 600 pieces of medical equipment to support the country in its Covid crisis. But the reality is that our country could do much more to help its ally than just offer a token shipment of supplies. The UK continues to block a patent waiver designed to boost the

The EU will regret suing AstraZeneca

Well, that will teach them to go around manufacturing a vaccine against a global virus at cost price, and at record speed. The European Union has today said it is planning to take legal action against the pharmaceuticals conglomerate AstraZeneca for failing to deliver enough doses of the Oxford shot on time.  No doubt European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and her team are planning to be exonerated. They will finally be able to demonstrate that the whole vaccine debacle, for which the Commission has taken so much flak, and which has already caused thousands of unnecessary deaths across continent, was all the fault of the Anglo-Swedish company. No doubt the untrustworthy

Kate Andrews

Should we give vaccines to India?

Last spring, scenes in Lombardy, Italy, caused panic in Whitehall: buckling healthcare systems and tents pitched outside emergency centres played a large role in the government’s decision to implement a nationwide lockdown. It was thought that the British public could tolerate many of the consequences of Covid-19, but not the idea that the NHS would be unable to cater to those who needed it.  As it happened, the UK’s worst nightmares were never realised. The Nightingale hospitals built to increase capacity were barely used. But what the British government feared most is now taking place elsewhere. India is suffering an exponential growth in infections, with more than 349,000 cases reported yesterday,

Boris’s vaccine propaganda film jumps the gun

Westminster’s much anticipated summer blockbuster dropped last night: ‘A Beacon of Hope: The UK Vaccine Story’ was released on 10 Downing Street’s Twitter and YouTube accounts just after 6pm. The video was teased on Twitter on 10 March, featuring a dramatic score and a tagline ‘coming soon’, raising questions as to how ‘soon’ it would appear, what its contents might be, and whether releasing a victory video in the middle of the UK’s vaccine rollout was slightly premature. Now we have some of those answers. The roughly 30 minute video features the pandemic’s most recognisable faces – including Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance – as well as far

The nationalists’ vaccine fallacy

The trouble with nationalism of any and every sort is that, in the end, it eats your brain. As evidence of this we may simply note Nicola Sturgeon’s assertions this week that the success of Britain’s vaccination programme should in no way encourage the thought an independent Scotland might have struggled to match this happy development. According to Sturgeon, there is ‘absolutely no evidential basis to say Scotland would not have vaccinated as many people as we’ve vaccinated right now’ if it were an independent state. This is, to use the technical term, bollocks on a tartan pogo-stick. It would be vastly closer to the truth to argue the contrary,

Need we fear a third wave after lockdown ends?

When Boris Johnson revealed his roadmap out of lockdown at the end of February he promised a ‘one way road to freedom.’ Since then, it has seemed that instead of freedom we may end up with continued social distancing, perhaps Covid passports and mandatory mask-wearing. The justification offered is that the virus might come back. But does the data back up this pessimism? I’m an academic at Bristol University and have developed the Predictor Corrector Coronavirus Filter (known as PCCF) model, updated daily on The Spectator’s data hub. It confirms that we can safely return to the ‘old normal’ on 21 June with no need for extra measures. It predicts that

How much of a threat is the South African variant?

For residents of six London boroughs, as well as those in Smethwick in the West Midlands, the partial relaxation of lockdown rules this week hasn’t quite gone according to plan. They’ve had a day out in the sun, alright, but not necessarily sitting enjoying food and drinks in a pub garden – more likely they have been standing in a long queue to get ‘surge tested’ for the South African variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19. So how much of a threat is the South African variant? In spite of anecdotal claims from South Africa that the new variant was affecting younger people, there is no evidence that

Letters: There’s nothing libertarian about vaccine passports

Taking liberties Sir: I feel that Matthew Parris is absolutely wrong about liberty (‘The libertarian case for vaccine passports’, 10 April). True liberty is that each individual has the possibility to live their life how they desire (within the law), taking full responsibility for any and all the risks they incur. I am not responsible for anyone else’s health. To say that we have to stay indoors, wear masks, observe social distancing or have vaccinations because we would be killing others if we did not is blackmail. If you use the logic that the individual is responsible for the health of all other people then everyone who owns a car

Why is Boris talking down Britain’s vaccine success again?

A few months ago, the Prime Minister was describing the jabs as the ‘scientific cavalry’ that was on its way to save us from our Covid – and lockdown – woes. But now the cavalry has arrived in the form of a vaccine rollout of unqualified success, the rhetoric has changed. The vaccine is no longer enough, according to Boris. Today we’ve seen another worrying shift in the PM’s words. In an interview with the BBC, Johnson broke the link between the UK’s ability to reopen and its vaccination programme success: The reductions in these numbers, in hospitalisations and in deaths and in infections, has not been achieved by the

Isabel Hardman

What lessons can be learnt from Britain’s vaccine success?

The NHS vaccination programme has reached its latest big milestone of offering a jab to everyone in the top nine priority groups three days ahead of schedule. Everyone in government and the health service is celebrating. Boris Johnson has been busy thanking ‘everyone involved in the vaccine rollout which has already saved many thousands of lives’, while NHS chief Sir Simon Stevens has said:  ‘Thanks to our NHS nurses, doctors, pharmacists, operational managers and thousands of other staff and volunteers, the NHS Covid vaccination programme is without a doubt the most successful in our history. It’s one of our tickets out of this pandemic and offers real hope for the

The UK’s vaccine roll-out has ended the Brexit debate

The country would remain implacably divided for a generation, with Remain and Leave replacing class and geography as the new fault line in British politics. International investors would take a generation to come round to the idea. And campaigns to re-join the EU would grow in strength as the chaos deepened. Even a few months ago, it was possible to argue that Britain’s tortured debate about leaving the EU would run and run without any seeming end. And yet since then something very interesting has happened. The UK’s comparative success at rolling out Covid-19 vaccines has in effect sealed the Brexit deal. The debate is now over, both here, and

The economic cost of the EU’s vaccine catastrophe

It didn’t order enough vaccines, spent too little money, dithered over authorisation and then lashed out at the companies making them. Over the last few weeks, the catastrophe of the European Union’s vaccine roll-out has become painfully clear to everyone. We are already starting to see the toll it is taking on the continent’s health, with a brutal third wave sweeping across mainland Europe as new variants hit an unvaccinated population, and with fresh lockdowns, overflowing hospitals, and death tolls still climbing as they fall dramatically elsewhere. And yet there is also a second stage to that crisis – an economic catastrophe – that is just getting started. The EU

Europe’s human rights judges are right not to ban compulsory vaccines

If you think public health authorities in England are overbearing, spare a thought for the Czechs. Parents who fail to have children vaccinated face being fined or having their offspring excluded from nurseries. Now, in a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights, has backed that policy. But even critics aghast at the thought of compulsory vaccinations should welcome the court’s verdict. Why? Because human rights judges should not be butting in here. The Czech law bends over backwards to accommodate welfare concerns: vaccinations are free; there are exceptions for good medical reasons; and any vaccine-generated injury is automatically compensated. Yet it was still an obvious target for human rights challenge on

Vaccine hesitancy is more dangerous than rare side effects

‘If you sail a massive liner across the Atlantic, you are going to have to make at least one course correction.’ This was the analogy used by professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the UK’s deputy chief medical officer, when explaining why the UK has opted to change its approach to vaccinating healthy 18 to 29-year-olds. For this group, officials argue, there is no point in taking any risk whatsoever, no matter how negligible, and that instead they should be offered the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines instead of Oxford-AstraZeneca. What we need now is urgent action to re-vitalise vaccine confidence On the one hand, from a clinical perspective, this seems very reasonable —

Letters: The inconsistencies of Mormonism

A leap of faith Sir: I live not far from the ‘London Temple’ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most summers, the local streets are trodden by American Mormon missionaries, polite teenagers who occasionally approach to ask if we know Jesus Christ. Some years ago, I read the book on which the new Netflix series Murder Among the Mormons (‘Latter-day sinners’, 3 April) appears to be based. So when I was accosted by a couple of missionaries, I was able to ask them why the practice of polygamy, so avidly promulgated by the founder of their church, Joseph Smith, had been abandoned. My interviewee explained that Smith

Matthew Parris

Vaccine passports are a ticket to freedom

In principle I’m in favour of vaccination passports, and don’t understand how — again in principle — anyone could be against the theory. One can have severe doubts about whether our NHS, pubs, theatres, sports grounds and restaurants would actually be capable of operating such a scheme, yet at the same time think it would be an excellent thing if they were. To me it seems not just sensible and fair but obvious that access to jobs or spaces where there is an enhanced risk of viral transmission might be restricted to people who could demonstrate a high degree of immunity. I’d add that in order for the idea to

Rod Liddle

The dilemma of vaccination

We have a government which is basically libertarian in its instincts, despite its current affection for telling us what we can and can’t do on a daily basis. This seems like a paradox or a non-sequitur, but it isn’t really, because in a sense it is a coalition government between libertarian politicians and a big-statist regulatory medical clergy. It is an interesting political marriage, a marriage of expediency. And it will soon become very strained. The government is about to run into big problems over its rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which many scientists believe could have a causal link to the prevalence of blood clots in a very small

Is the writing on the wall for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

It was the great British scientific triumph: an example of how big pharma can work altruistically for the good of the world, by making a vaccine available at cost price. But is the writing now on the wall for the AstraZeneca vaccine? This afternoon the European Medicines Agency (EMA) ruled that blood clots can be a ‘very rare side effect’ of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It has encouraged health professionals to communicate that ‘people receiving the vaccine to remain aware of the possibility of very rare cases of blood clots combined with low levels of blood platelets occurring within two weeks of vaccination.’ There may be an age factor as well:

What Britain can learn from Israel’s vaccine passports

Boris Johnson’s announcement about vaccine passports was met with criticism from backbenchers on both sides of the political spectrum. The scheme was described as potentially ‘discriminatory’ with warnings that it may lead to a ‘two-tier’ Britain. Labour leader Keir Starmer even said the use of vaccine passports is ‘not British.’ Given the deep suspicion towards national identification cards, this did not come a surprise. But if the government eventually chooses to use vaccine passports, some lessons from Israel’s experience may be helpful. Despite their cultural differences, the Israeli and British publics are protective of their democratic rights and liberal freedoms Israel has been giving digital certificates to people following their second