SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Some news updates about the virus. Not very good news. :(

The patients varied in terms of preexisting conditions, severity of illness, and time since diagnosis. Fifty-three were male and the median age was 49. Sixty-seven recovered at home and the other third were hospitalized. Of those that recovered at home, 18 were asymptomatic and 49 had minor or moderate symptoms.

None of these factors seemed to be a predictor for cardiovascular complications. The researchers used MRI to search for signs of heart conditions and myocardial inflammation and found both were common across all groupings. Despite it being a respiratory illness, the inflammation burden that COVID-19 places on the body damages the heart.
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https://www.menshealth.com/health/a33807752/covid-19-heart-damage-exercise

Antibodies against the coronavirus declined rapidly in the British population during the summer, a study found on Tuesday (Oct 27), suggesting protection after infection may not be long lasting and raising the prospect of waning immunity in the community.

Scientists at Imperial College London have tracked antibody levels in the British population following the first wave of COVID-19 infections in March and April.

Their study found that antibody prevalence fell by a quarter, from 6 per cent of the population around the end of June to just 4.4 per cent in September. That raises the prospect of decreasing population immunity ahead of a second wave of infections in recent weeks that has forced local lockdowns and restrictions.
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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/covid-19-antibodies-immunity-waning-uk-study-13381252
 
bonothom said:
Lockdowns will indirectly cause more deaths in the long run than Covid.
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Any evidence?

I’d have thought there’s a decent chance lockdowns will cause a net reduction in non-covid deaths due to less pollution, car crashes and work place accidents.

I can’t find it now but there was at one study of the 2009 crash which showed a reductions in deaths due to those factors.
 
Tibs said:
On BBC about Syria. Heartbreaking

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-54697587
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I’m assuming you know Syria isn’t in Africa right ?

BootsyCollins said:
So anybody have any insight on how its looking in Africa?

I remember in the beginning people were scared that it would be a disaster there, but have not heard much since. Maybe exept some articles about South Africa, but even that was some time ago now.
Is it the usual "western media dont care much about africa" and i need to check other sources or is the situation there not so bad?
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Nigeria is doing fine. Long out of lockdown and restrictions, currently have bigger problems than the corona virus.
 
Wibble said:
Some good news about the Oxford vaccine

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2...-astrazeneca-works-in-all-ages-trials-suggest
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Definitely good news, I would venture that immunogenicity *should* translate into clinical efficacy (and protection longevity) in theory but good if antibody titres are comparable to younger patients and lower side effects. No published data to confirm of course objectively. Of course like with so many things around this disease its conjecture (possibly misplaced optimism) I think at this point.

The chief exec of an NHS Trust in Warwickshire said that they've been asked to prepare a vaccination programme for NHS staff from around early december so not sure what data some of the managers are privy to.

A big part of it I'd imagine even if they have promising results and think they can bypass EU approval things to expedite a roll out will be the publications. It will be the most widely anticipated but also dissected scientific publication in history so they have to get it right in terms of transparency.

Still don't think uptake due to vaccine hesitancy will be an issue beyond a few shrieking voices, flu vaccine programme has seen unprecedented demand from all age groups citing covid as the reason.
 
Leroy The Red said:
I’m assuming you know Syria isn’t in Africa right ?


Nigeria is doing fine. Long out of lockdown and restrictions, currently have bigger problems than the corona virus.
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Thanks. Yes im guessing the focus is on a different Sars there. Hoping you are good, if you live there.

UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Developed cities that have Covid imported from other regions have seen higher cases, but Africa has fewer routine transmission routes. Internal flights etc. they don’t import cases from hotspots to unaffected areas as much.

Plus it has more sunshine. Plus I’m sure it’s underreported in many areas.

I’ve got friends in Cape Town, Addis Ababa and Accra. It’s sketchy and loosely following standard global trends in all three. No idea how small towns, cities and villages are doing obviously.
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Thanks for the update. With the wide spread in Europe the newspapers here dont write much about anywhere else.
 
Wolverine said:
Definitely good news, I would venture that immunogenicity *should* translate into clinical efficacy (and protection longevity) in theory but good if antibody titres are comparable to younger patients and lower side effects. No published data to confirm of course objectively. Of course like with so many things around this disease its conjecture (possibly misplaced optimism) I think at this point.

The chief exec of an NHS Trust in Warwickshire said that they've been asked to prepare a vaccination programme for NHS staff from around early december so not sure what data some of the managers are privy to.

A big part of it I'd imagine even if they have promising results and think they can bypass EU approval things to expedite a roll out will be the publications. It will be the most widely anticipated but also dissected scientific publication in history so they have to get it right in terms of transparency.

Still don't think uptake due to vaccine hesitancy will be an issue beyond a few shrieking voices, flu vaccine programme has seen unprecedented demand from all age groups citing covid as the reason.
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Was just thinking about that earlier. Never will a publication have had so much scrutiny from medical and lay people alike. Can you imagine the pressure the peer reviewers will feel going over it?!
 
Tarrou said:
Any evidence?

I’d have thought there’s a decent chance lockdowns will cause a net reduction in non-covid deaths due to less pollution, car crashes and work place accidents.

I can’t find it now but there was at one study of the 2009 crash which showed a reductions in deaths due to those factors.
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It's a pretty mixed bag and varies across countries. What we know for certain is that lockdown hasn't led to more deaths than covid right now, although the people that put that argument forward do tend to mean it as a general forecast for the negative health effects from the economic outcomes, the gradual build-up in mental health problems, etc. In that sense it's pretty much set up as an unfalsifiable position, and you can find evidence from past economic crashes that suggest more people died from suicides but fewer people died from employment-related illnesses, and general disagreement on the overall health outcomes of the same recession. At the end of the day we don't have any good data on the causality either way.

There are mental health professionals in some countries that are sounding alarms about the increase in suicide risk, and there are some indications from survey data that this is the case in the UK, which inevitably the usual suspects have jumped all over. But the unfortunate reality is suicide rates were increasing in the UK before covid, we don't have any data on it now, and we know misinformation is being spread about it to people like @bonothom.

A more holistic and exhaustive analysis was done by the ONS and it doesn't provide any simple answers. There was a significant increase in non-covid deaths during lockdown, far below covid deaths, but still far above the average. There's good reason to believe that a substantial portion of those were from undiagnosed covid because the two causes of mortality that saw the biggest spike in that period were "symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions" and "dementia and alzheimer's disease", which have fallen back to normal levels now and which mostly applied to people most at-risk from covid. But there's also good reason to believe that worse care in care homes, when things were out of control, also led to many more deaths unrelated to covid. Now mortality rates are essentially back to normal.

This is what the ONS said about that:

Non-COVID-19 deaths due to each cause plotted have returned to approximately pre-COVID-19 levels (pre Week 11) after peaking between Weeks 14 and 16. Deaths due to influenza and pneumonia peaked in Week 14 and fell sooner, reaching pre-COVID-19 levels around Week 18 and have since been slightly below pre-COVID-19 levels.

Deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions peaked slightly later, in Week 16, and have fallen more slowly. This could indicate some deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are linked to longer-term changes, such as changes to practice in care homes to combat COVID-19.

These results also indicate that major causes of death have returned to more typical patterns following Weeks 11 to 18, while the composition of deaths by place of death observed earlier has continued to change. This is particularly interesting when care home and private home deaths both increased in Weeks 11 to 18, but have since presented different trends. The ONS’s analysis of deaths in the care sector release, and the forthcoming report on deaths in private homes, explore these two settings in more detail, including by cause of death within each setting.

Deaths due to influenza and pneumonia were below the five-year average earlier in the year probably because of the relatively mild winter and low levels of circulating flu. After a brief rise in Weeks 11 to 18, the levels are back to slightly below average levels for this time of year, despite it no longer being the season for winter flu. It could be that increased social distancing has led to reduced infection rates for flu and other infectious conditions, or that some of the population susceptible to flu have died due to other causes such as COVID-19. As such this could be another example of mortality displacement.
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So the simple answer is there is no evidence that lockdowns have caused more deaths in the same time than covid. While there is evidence that there as an increase in deaths during lockdown, it's difficult to know how many of them would have been avoided without the lockdown given how many of them would have happened irrespective of it due to the care home catastrophe. We'll get a better idea of that when we see the 2nd half of this year's figures as so many areas are in lockdown-lite facing many of the same issues that were raised before, while the care home situation is under control.

Separating the negative effects from the lockdown from the negative effects of living through a pandemic, when it comes to preventative medical care, later life care, mental-health related consequences and similar, is going to be really difficult no matter what. It makes a lot of assumptions about cause and effect that are very questionable looking at it from either perspective. Lockdown might lead to fewer deaths from car accidents and more deaths from suicides, and taken altogether it is plausible that it will lead to more non-covid deaths overall. We'll probably never have a concrete answer to that.

The view that the lockdown will cause more deaths is just a belief, it's not something they need evidence for, if the evidence doesn't exist yet it's just because they haven't found it yet.
 
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Tarrou said:
Any evidence?

I’d have thought there’s a decent chance lockdowns will cause a net reduction in non-covid deaths due to less pollution, car crashes and work place accidents.

I can’t find it now but there was at one study of the 2009 crash which showed a reductions in deaths due to those factors.
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There’s definitely been a paradoxical increase in life expectancy associated with economic downturns over the years. It’s a weird one but less money to spend seems to result in fewer risks being taken and hence fewer people dying young.

The current recession is a bit different in that it’s associated with a killer virus, which might even things out a bit!
 
When should we expect to see evidence that their restrictions are effective or not?
 
`Pretty bad, you get some of Sun/Mon added on for Tuesday though but another new threshold set.

Belgium's deaths are equivalent to about 450-500 deaths for France/UK
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
My Family?.... we’ve all agreed to spend the 14 day run up to Christmas in self isolation, we’ve booked a large house, I’m buying everyone’s tests, anyone that breaks protocol can’t come.

It annoys the feck out of me. But they were going to just go to their own houses had I not stepped in.
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That's not a bad idea, although you don't really need to do 14 day isolation AND tests.

My wife is determined to travel back to the UK for Christmas. I don't see it happening but if it does I'm insisting we drive and stay well away from others on the way. We're quite isolated at the moment and i'm happy to keep it that way. We've both had negative tests in the last week, half our friends are in quarantine for various positive connections, and the gyms and sports facilities are shut, so there's not much reason to be in contact with anybody.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Was just thinking about that earlier. Never will a publication have had so much scrutiny from medical and lay people alike. Can you imagine the pressure the peer reviewers will feel going over it?!
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I think for me the biggest issue is going to be the current issue of almost expectation being in a binary (either the vaccine is or is not effective, safe or not safe). Like the flu vaccination there will such a huge variation in efficacy it will be difficult to see widespread agreement on whether we should put all our eggs in that basket with mass vaccination programme when we know we have other candidates upcoming too.

Communication will be key though for acceptance, I don't know how we'll manage though as I'm sure the Mail and Telegraph will overplay the adverse events side of things and dabble in pseudoscientific conspiracy theorism. The way the MMR thing blew up its certainly possible that hesitancy will be a problem should they not explain away with robust root cause analysis like details of any adverse events and why trials were halted etc.

From a mass acceptance POV I'd imagine over here due to financial implications NHS England, Public Health England may not care what Royal Colleges or other groups say about them and do them if its comparable to flu-vaccine in terms of safety and efficacy they'll want to get the show on the road and not care about nitpicky physicians/groups. You'd imagine though the peer reviewers represent a wide range of clinicians/academics to give it thing credibility.

I don't know if you have twitter but Ben Goldacre and Margaret McCartney (scottish GP) both have a super hardon for evidence based medicine so I've got their @'s followed to save me the trouble of dissecting it when we the data is published
 
11101 said:
That's not a bad idea, although you don't really need to do 14 day isolation AND tests.

My wife is determined to travel back to the UK for Christmas. I don't see it happening but if it does I'm insisting we drive and stay well away from others on the way. We're quite isolated at the moment and i'm happy to keep it that way. We've both had negative tests in the last week, half our friends are in quarantine for various positive connections, and the gyms and sports facilities are shut, so there's not much reason to be in contact with anybody.
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Yeah I know. But that’s my hard line. I don’t trust my extended in-laws to obey to the exact letter of my law.

I’ve lucked out on Covid. My job has continued. My expenses have gone down. I work for a business that has sourced tests and I can justify the cost.

Not because I think Christmas is special. But because I think my brothers wife’s parents may be a bit more loose (‘Not worse that flu’) and this is the only way I can protect my parents from everyones lack of social responsibility.

I’ve paid for the country house. I’ve let my friend use my house to meet their 4 person family on the same day as long as they cover the cost of a cleaner.

It’s the best I can do. I’d happily sit at home with the girl and watch Home Alone, but I’m boxed in.

——

Main Point being, the Government could guide people towards better decisions. They won’t.

February is going to be awful.
 
Wolverine said:
I think for me the biggest issue is going to be the current issue of almost expectation being in a binary (either the vaccine is or is not effective, safe or not safe). Like the flu vaccination there will such a huge variation in efficacy it will be difficult to see widespread agreement on whether we should put all our eggs in that basket with mass vaccination programme when we know we have other candidates upcoming too.

Communication will be key though for acceptance, I don't know how we'll manage though as I'm sure the Mail and Telegraph will overplay the adverse events side of things and dabble in pseudoscientific conspiracy theorism. The way the MMR thing blew up its certainly possible that hesitancy will be a problem should they not explain away with robust root cause analysis like details of any adverse events and why trials were halted etc.

From a mass acceptance POV I'd imagine over here due to financial implications NHS England, Public Health England may not care what Royal Colleges or other groups say about them and do them if its comparable to flu-vaccine in terms of safety and efficacy they'll want to get the show on the road and not care about nitpicky physicians/groups. You'd imagine though the peer reviewers represent a wide range of clinicians/academics to give it thing credibility.

I don't know if you have twitter but Ben Goldacre and Margaret McCartney (scottish GP) both have a super hardon for evidence based medicine so I've got their @'s followed to save me the trouble of dissecting it when we the data is published
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I’m very familiar with Dr Goldacre. I work for a pharma company so am well used to his barbs being flung in our direction. He’s often fair and correct with his criticism but often not. I particularly enjoyed the hubris of the project he set up to expose pharma companies failure to report clinical trial results which ended up identifying academic institutions as the main culprits.

He is good at critical appraisal, though, I’ll give him that. His take on the vaccine publications will be worth a read.
 
@Pogue Mahone
You could really do a better job of shilling for your big pharma vaccine company in this thread. Look and learn from the stand up job Wibble has been doing.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’m very familiar with Dr Goldacre. I work for a pharma company so am well used to his barbs being flung in our direction. He’s often fair and correct with his criticism but often not. I particularly enjoyed the hubris of the project he set up to expose pharma companies failure to report clinical trial results which ended up identifying academic institutions as the main culprits.

He is good at critical appraisal, though, I’ll give him that. His take on the vaccine publications will be worth a read.
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Was the takeaway not “All trials should be identified”?

From what I remember he started with a hypothesis of ‘Not reporting is bad’ with the assumption that Big Pharma was worse for it.

The conclusions being Academic institutions were worse.

But the additional conclusions ran to ‘Academic institutions struggle to fund research if they fail often’ and ‘Big Pharma has money to spend on failure as it doesn’t make them stop trying’.

Only trying to clarify as my brother was mates with him for a time. Always followed what he’s done.

Could be misremembering though.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Test by all means but you won’t have Covid.

Fingers crossed for you.
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I ended up booking a drive through test at Manchester airport as I've been told the results come back quicker. The home delivery one has only just arrived I couldn't wait about that long.

Feel absolutely terrible at this moment, can defo feel my chest getting worse and I keep getting terrible headaches and feel fatigued. The way I currently feel I find it hard to believe I've not got it if I'm honest.
 
Devil81 said:
I ended up booking a drive through test at Manchester airport as I've been told the results come back quicker. The home delivery one has only just arrived I couldn't wait about that long.

Feel absolutely terrible at this moment, can defo feel my chest getting worse and I keep getting terrible headaches and feel fatigued. The way I currently feel I find it hard to believe I've not got it if I'm honest.
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Im not being a dick, but the manifestation of fake Covid19 is real.

I was sick as a dog in August. Anti biotics fixed it. Never had a fever, cough, or change of taste/smell.

During, I panicked. After the fact I realised I was daft.

Wishing you the best.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Im not being a dick, but the manifestation of fake Covid19 is real.

I was sick as a dog in August. Anti biotics fixed it. Never had a fever, cough, or change of taste/smell.

During, I panicked. After the fact I realised I was daft.

Wishing you the best.
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I've got admit I've been a sceptic but I know of loads now going down with it, South Manchester is rife with it.
 
Devil81 said:
I've got admit I've been a sceptic but I know of loads now going down with it, South Manchester is rife with it.
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You’ve done the right thing to get tested. But you don’t have most of the symptoms.

Fingers still crossed.
 
The Christmas thing is difficult because there's going to be a lot of folk who have abided by the rules since March and are now struggling with the idea of abiding for that day. Especially people who haven't seen their families for months. I get that some people are looking forward to a family free Christmas but as you get older that shit changes sometimes.

I can't imagine my mum, who has seen her grandson a grand total of four times since March (only when you were allowed in other people's houses) having Christmas alone. But, at the same time, she's old and her health isn't the best. She doesn't leave her house so the risk of anyone in our house being infected by her is next to zero, but the other way around is a different story (step kids will be at their bio dad's by the time she comes over so it'll just be me, my missus and the wee one).

I like @UnrelatedPsuedo way of doing it. Just wish we could pull the kids out of school the week before the holidays but that would also be wrong.
 
Devil81 said:
I ended up booking a drive through test at Manchester airport as I've been told the results come back quicker. The home delivery one has only just arrived I couldn't wait about that long.

Feel absolutely terrible at this moment, can defo feel my chest getting worse and I keep getting terrible headaches and feel fatigued. The way I currently feel I find it hard to believe I've not got it if I'm honest.
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Good luck fella
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
You’ve done the right thing to get tested. But you don’t have most of the symptoms.

Fingers still crossed.
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He’s fatigued with headaches - that’s more than enough symptoms

my brothers wife in US had her birthday about a week ago. Her brother, partner and 2 kids cane over, they wore masks and socially distanced in the garden. Couple of days later, her brother rings to say he’s going to get tested because he’s really not feeling good, very fatigued. Positive result. Turns out he’d had a headache a few days before but came over anyway. So the guy (who owns a restaurant, and a bar), his partner (a teacher) and 1 of the kids all got infected. My brother and his wife tested negative, quite possibly because they are convinced they had it around May.
 
Devil81 said:
I ended up booking a drive through test at Manchester airport as I've been told the results come back quicker. The home delivery one has only just arrived I couldn't wait about that long.

Feel absolutely terrible at this moment, can defo feel my chest getting worse and I keep getting terrible headaches and feel fatigued. The way I currently feel I find it hard to believe I've not got it if I'm honest.
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Good luck with the results. My friend had one at the airport and it came back in less than 12 hours. But this was summer when things weren’t so busy!
 
Beginning to look like Ireland’s second wave may have peaked:

85-AEE141-0274-4011-840-B-E853-AD7-E8070.jpg
 
Mr Pigeon said:
The Christmas thing is difficult because there's going to be a lot of folk who have abided by the rules since March and are now struggling with the idea of abiding for that day. Especially people who haven't seen their families for months. I get that some people are looking forward to a family free Christmas but as you get older that shit changes sometimes.

I can't imagine my mum, who has seen her grandson a grand total of four times since March (only when you were allowed in other people's houses) having Christmas alone. But, at the same time, she's old and her health isn't the best. She doesn't leave her house so the risk of anyone in our house being infected by her is next to zero, but the other way around is a different story (step kids will be at their bio dad's by the time she comes over so it'll just be me, my missus and the wee one).

I like @UnrelatedPsuedo way of doing it. Just wish we could pull the kids out of school the week before the holidays but that would also be wrong.
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We're doing something very similar although not as long. It's a bit annoying we can't just stay at the in-laws but i reckon one of their old curtain twitching neighbours would report them.

It would certainly be sensible of the government to release kids early for the holidays and have a national plan to isolate and see only one other household.
 
esmufc07 said:
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It highlights the issue for areas like Manchester (that has been in special measures since July and only seen case numbers rise) - people won't self quarantine for "symptoms" or even if a "contact" tests positive, unless they can afford to and they won't self isolate at home (even after a positive test) unless their housing and family circumstances allow it. In April, the wide nature and relatively short duration of the lockdown helped with compliance but even that short term action depleted individual finances and care/support/housing backup plans. Instead of talking tiers, and which businesses to close, they have to look at why people don't react correctly to symptoms or to contacts' test results.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Was the takeaway not “All trials should be identified”?

From what I remember he started with a hypothesis of ‘Not reporting is bad’ with the assumption that Big Pharma was worse for it.

The conclusions being Academic institutions were worse.

But the additional conclusions ran to ‘Academic institutions struggle to fund research if they fail often’ and ‘Big Pharma has money to spend on failure as it doesn’t make them stop trying’.

Only trying to clarify as my brother was mates with him for a time. Always followed what he’s done.

Could be misremembering though.
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That’s a fair summary actually. I just found it funny because his original hypothesis was so obviously about catching pharma with its pants down only for them to be setting a standard that academia (i.e. the organisations that pay his salary) was falling far below.
 
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Wolverine said:
The chief exec of an NHS Trust in Warwickshire said that they've been asked to prepare a vaccination programme for NHS staff from around early december so not sure what data some of the managers are privy to.
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I think they are aiming for phase 3 trials being completed this month (barring a setback) and all the countries who have contracted to buy and/or make the vaccine know that and are gearing up assuming success. The company in Melbourne recently said they were already manufacturing although the current scale of production wasn't articulated. So administration to front line heath workers late 2020 or early 2021 seems at least possible. Wouldn't that be a great Christmas present - the news of front-line health workers getting a vaccination would give the world a much needed boost.
 
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