Sun Jan 10, 2021 6:24 pm
NHS Covid-19 jab letters 'confusing over 80s'
People waiting to receive the Covid-19 vaccine say they are confused by NHS letters inviting them to travel to centres miles away from their homes.
The first 130,000 letters have been sent to people aged 80 or older who live between a 30 to 45-minute drive from one of seven new regional centres.
But patients, many of whom are shielding, questioned why they had to travel so far in a pandemic.
Local jabs are available to people if they wait, the NHS said.
The seven centres include Ashton Gate in Bristol, Epsom racecourse in Surrey, London's Nightingale hospital, Newcastle's Centre for Life, the Manchester Tennis and Football Centre, Robertson House in Stevenage and Birmingham's Millennium Point.
Two Labour MPs tweeted about their concerns about the letters being delayed in getting out to people due to coronavirus affecting Royal Mail staff.
Mary McGarry from Leamington Spa in Warwickshire told BBC News that her letter points to an NHS online booking page which suggests she would have to take her husband, who has cancer and a lung disease, 20 miles to Birmingham.
Dr Sarah Raistrick, from Coventry and Rugby Clinical Commission group (CCG), said people did not have to travel to the centres but admitted the letter did not make that clear.
"You can wait and be contacted by your local GP service and have it locally if you'd prefer.
"If you sit tight, you will be contacted and I'm hopeful that if you're 80 or over, by the end of this month you will have had your vaccination whether that is locally or whether you have chosen to travel," she said.
Work will be done with the NHS locally and nationally to make that message clearer, she added.
Sat Jan 16, 2021 3:19 am
‘We see nothing alarming,’ says Norwegian drugs regulator, after 13 deaths linked to Pfizer vaccine jabs
At least 13 people have died in Norway due to side effects of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, the national medicines regulator has revealed. All were frail and elderly people who had unusually strong reactions to the jabs.
Norway launched its Covid-19 immunization program on December 27, including residents of nursing homes on the priority list. Since then, 23 people have died shortly after receiving the injections. Norwegian medics are evaluating all such cases and have linked 13 of them to the side effects of the vaccine, according to local media.
“We do not see anything alarming with these figures. All deaths are in elderly and frail people with underlying diseases,” Dr. Steinar Madsen, the medical director of the national drug regulator, the Norwegian Medicines Agency, explained.
Norway is currently investigating the death of 23 nursing home residents who passed away shortly after receiving Pfizer jabs, with 13 of the cases being linked to the side effects of the vaccine.
The Norwegian Public Health Institute updated its Covid-19 vaccination guidelines earlier this week to reflect the new data. The document now instructs medics to thoroughly evaluate nursing home residents before giving them the vaccine. For very ill people who are not expected to live long, the benefit of the jab “may be marginal or negligible,” the guidelines say.
https://www.rt.com/news/512586-norway-v ... ly-deaths/
Sat Jan 16, 2021 3:22 am
All deaths are in elderly and frail people with underlying diseases
Sat Jan 16, 2021 2:14 pm
Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:26 am
Covid-related deaths in care homes in England jump by 46%
Deaths in care homes in England have hit the highest level since mid-May, according to the latest official figures, which revealed a 46% jump in coronavirus-related deaths in the last week as the more transmissible variant of Covid-19 breaches care homes’ defences.
In the week to last Friday, 1,260 deaths in care homes involving Covid-19 were reported to the Care Quality Commission, a sharp jump from 824 and 661 in the previous two weeks. The weekly death toll in care homes had fallen to well below 100 in early October.
The rising numbers came after the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, described the inoculation programme as “a race against deaths” and GPs scrambled to deliver vaccines to the half of care home residents yet to receive jabs. NHS England has set a goal of vaccinating all care residents by Sunday as care homes report “extreme staffing pressures” amid outbreaks that have almost trebled since late December.
Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics for the week to 8 January showed more than 25,000 people had died from Covid in care homes across the UK since the start of the pandemic.
However, the number of care home residents who have succumbed to Covid is more than 6,000 higher once deaths after residents were admitted to hospital are taken into account.
Wed Jan 20, 2021 11:40 am
Wed Jan 20, 2021 5:46 pm
Fri Jan 22, 2021 4:31 am
Fri Jan 22, 2021 10:27 pm
Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:28 pm
German authorities recommend blocking use of AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s
The independent commission advising the German government on vaccination policy has recommended that the AstraZeneca vaccine not be used for people aged over 65, in a move likely to complicate the acrimonious rollout of the jab in the EU.
A statement by the Standing Vaccine Commission at the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s main public health agency, said there were “insufficient data currently available to ascertain how effective the vaccination is above 65 years”.
For that reason, the commission recommended that the vaccine only be used for people aged between 18 and 64. The body added that the two vaccines that had been approved by the EU authorities — from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna — were judged to be “equivalent in terms of safety and efficacy”.
Shares in AstraZeneca fell 2.4 per cent after the news.