Vaccine rollout in Italy

[Herainestold]

I was able to log in to my health records on the website of the Lombardy region, using my digital identity (a kind of certified two-factor authentication which has now become mandatory and free for Italians although I set it up a while ago). I was then able to look at my vaccination record, and download a pdf of it which has a QR and instructions for how to validate it for anyone I show it to who doubts me.

Not that it entitles me to do anything which non-vaccinated people can do at the moment (until mid June) but Italy is talking about a "Green Pass" valid from 15 days after the first vaccination to 9 months after the second one (if applicable). Otherwise, 6 months after recovering from a covid infection. Or 48 hours after a negative PCR test.

(The Green Pass won't actually indicate anything about your medical history, just that you fulfil one of the criteria.)

What happens 9 months after the second vax? The next wave and a new lockdown?

[shpalman]

I was able to log in to my health records on the website of the Lombardy region, using my digital identity (a kind of certified two-factor authentication which has now become mandatory and free for Italians although I set it up a while ago). I was then able to look at my vaccination record, and download a pdf of it which has a QR and instructions for how to validate it for anyone I show it to who doubts me.

Not that it entitles me to do anything which non-vaccinated people can do at the moment (until mid June) but Italy is talking about a "Green Pass" valid from 15 days after the first vaccination to 9 months after the second one (if applicable). Otherwise, 6 months after recovering from a covid infection. Or 48 hours after a negative PCR test.

(The Green Pass won't actually indicate anything about your medical history, just that you fulfil one of the criteria.)

What happens 9 months after the second vax? The next wave and a new lockdown?

According to https://lab.gedidigital.it/gedi-visual/ ... vaccinati/ we're on track to vaccinate 80% of the population - basically everyone over 16 - by the beginning of October at the current rate of about half a million a day. This could accelerate if vaccines arrive at a faster rate, or it could slow right down in August when everyone's on holiday. The EMA is probably going to approve Pfizer for the 12-15 age range any minute now, but that's less than 2 million kids i.e. 4 days of first doses and 4 days of second doses, so it shouldn't massively change things.

"9 months after the second vax" would for me be February, and while for the earliest adopters would already be September, there weren't many of those; it took a few months for things to get going here so it wouldn't be before December/January for most people and probably even later since I got my doses ahead of the age-based rollout (for my age group, booking opened late last night). I'd even wonder if "9 months" is being suggested so that Christmas is included for most of us.

Pfizer has already been talking about giving people a booster dose and then an annual dose... fact is that we don't know about long-term protection or about what new variants will arise.

I'm hoping that by October, with everyone* vaccinated, covid will basically be gone from Europe apart from occasional imported cases which don't lead to serious outbreaks.

[shpalman]

Going to pass through 30 million doses administered today. About 10 million have had both doses, but the important number is probably that more than a quarter of the population (16 million) had at least one dose at least two weeks ago.

Italy's case average is dropping through 60/100,000/week (i.e. a bit worse than Leicester) but deaths are still at around 2/100,000/week, an average of more than 150 a day, and it's not obvious to me that deaths are falling faster than cases. For comparison, the UK currently has an average of 6 deaths per day despite cases being 20-25/100,000/week for about 4 weeks (cases went down a bit and are now coming up but deaths kept going down).

[shpalman]

(booking is open for over-40's, for appointments in June)

[shpalman]

Actually I see from our world in data that for most of May Italy has been going faster in terms of doses per person than the UK and that EU countries have caught up with the UK's rate generally.

[shpalman]

Booking was already open for over-30's but tomorrow night, anyone over the age of 12 will be able to book (or get their parents to book and print out the form to sign).

Italy's generally going quite quickly now, with a couple of days last week reaching nearly 600,000 doses, so that the average over 7 days was finally more than half a million per day.

Lombardy is currently even the region with the highest usage percentage: 98.5% of delivered doses have been administered (against a national average of 95.7%) so it wouldn't be possible to go significantly faster without more deliveries. Pfizer is matching their targets and even Moderna has been getting moving. AstraZeneca and Janssen still being sh.t.

Meanwhile it seems to me like cases have been dropping faster than deaths (the opposite was happening in the UK) but maybe both are now on a two-week halving time.

[shpalman]

Ok, there's just been an update, with about 3 million more Pfizer doses being delivered, so that should keep us going another week or so.

[shpalman]

Well there was a bit of a dip this week (2nd of June is the Republic of Italy's birthday, and also stocks were running low) but the last few days have been at around 600,000 doses per day.

[shpalman]

https://www.quicomo.it/attualita/corona ... uando.html

At the end of June, Lombardy will go back to the specified dose schedules for Pfizer and Moderna (my dance partner had her first dose of Pfizer yesterday and has the second dose after 5 weeks).

[shpalman]

While it's allowed by the EMA, the AIFA is reminding everyone of the strategy to not give AstraZeneca to young people because a few of them will die from it.

https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2021/0 ... a/6226452/

[shpalman]

More than 800,000 vaccine doses administered* between 6am yesterday and 6am today. A 7-day average of 575,000**.

* - registered on https://www.governo.it/it/cscovid19/report-vaccini/

** - https://lab.gedidigital.it/gedi-visual/ ... vaccinati/

[shpalman]

So it's a bit of a mess here, with the new rule about really not giving AstraZeneca to under-60's even if they really want it,* even if they've already had a first dose of it without problems. People due to have the second AZ dose today had their appointments cancelled without it being immediately obvious when they'll get a dose of Pfizer instead (the region says Thursday, apparently).

(* - some regions organized "open days" in which young people could just show up and get an AZ dose if they wanted it, to use up the doses which were going spare due to refusals.)

I've noted that the case rate keeps coming down but deaths aren't coming down faster than cases, which leads me to wonder if it's not a result of having vaccinated a cross-section of young people and certain professional groups rather than following a strictly age-based rollout.

[shpalman]

Apparently Italy is supposed to receive 20 million vaccine doses in June. So far, Pfizer has delivered 9.3 million, so that's not bad. Nearly 3 million arrived the other day so the total is something like 33.6 million doses, which is already 1 million more than the projection from the beginning of the year for the end of the second quarter.

AstraZeneca has only delivered 9.1 million doses in total when their projection for the end of the second quarter was for more than 26 million.

Pity there's no official UK source for doses delivered, just that guy on twitter who doesn't seem to understand that thing about icecream whatever it was.

[shpalman]

They've decided that in Italy people who got AstraZeneca as their first dose can choose whether to get an mRNA vaccine for their second dose, or get another AZ anyway assuming they consent to the risks and there's no medical reason not to.

Which is probably the right answer, except it messed things up for anyone whose second AZ dose should have been last week; those appointments got cancelled while they tried to sort out the latest mess caused by a young person dying after an AZ dose.

[shpalman]

it turns out that France, Italy, and Germany can vaccinate faster now that they're actually getting some doses delivered instead of the UK getting them all

at-least-one-dose percentage

fully-vaccinated percentage

recent doses-per-population

[Herainestold]

it turns out that France, Italy, and Germany can vaccinate faster now that they're actually getting some doses delivered instead of the UK getting them all

at-least-one-dose percentage

fully-vaccinated percentage

recent doses-per-population

interesting. Looks like UK, Chile, Israel are all tied at #1 for one dose percentage. Yet only one of those countries has been able to return to near normal.

[jdc]

it turns out that France, Italy, and Germany can vaccinate faster now that they're actually getting some doses delivered instead of the UK getting them all

at-least-one-dose percentage

fully-vaccinated percentage

recent doses-per-population

interesting. Looks like UK, Chile, Israel are all tied at #1 for one dose percentage. Yet only one of those countries has been able to return to near normal.

Is it the one that used Pfizer, had proper travel restrictions, took a different approach to vaccinating by age, and is ahead of other countries on two dose percentage?

Israel passed 50% 'fully vaccinated' in March when the UK was at 2.5% and Chile 12%. I'd imagine that was the main factor.

[Herainestold]

it turns out that France, Italy, and Germany can vaccinate faster now that they're actually getting some doses delivered instead of the UK getting them all

at-least-one-dose percentage

fully-vaccinated percentage

recent doses-per-population

interesting. Looks like UK, Chile, Israel are all tied at #1 for one dose percentage. Yet only one of those countries has been able to return to near normal.

Is it the one that used Pfizer, had proper travel restrictions, took a different approach to vaccinating by age, and is ahead of other countries on two dose percentage?

Israel passed 50% 'fully vaccinated' in March when the UK was at 2.5% and Chile 12%. I'd imagine that was the main factor.

I think it was proper travel restrictions mostly. The other things important too.

[shpalman]

The rolling average number of deaths per day in Lombardy (pop. 10 million) is just over 2. But today zero were reported, which hasn't happened since last June.

Don't know if it'll last, obviously, but the trend in deaths is still downwards and this isn't just a day-of-the-week effect.

The trend in cases is maybe flat, now, though, at about 110 per day. That does work out to be something like 8/100,000/week though, which isn't much.

Vaccination is still going on at more than half a million doses per day in Italy, and there seem to be decent stocks (currently indicating that 88.8% of delivered doses have been administered, i.e. there's a stock of 6.6 million, enough for nearly two weeks) but I've been hearing that supply might slow down in July.

In contrast to the beginning of the rollout when the Lega administration's moron friends were in charge of it, Lombardy's rollout now seems to be the fastest in Italy rather than one of the slowest.

[Herainestold]

The rolling average number of deaths per day in Lombardy (pop. 10 million) is just over 2. But today zero were reported, which hasn't happened since last June.

Don't know if it'll last, obviously, but the trend in deaths is still downwards and this isn't just a day-of-the-week effect.

The trend in cases is maybe flat, now, though, at about 110 per day. That does work out to be something like 8/100,000/week though, which isn't much.

Vaccination is still going on at more than half a million doses per day in Italy, and there seem to be decent stocks (currently indicating that 88.8% of delivered doses have been administered, i.e. there's a stock of 6.6 million, enough for nearly two weeks) but I've been hearing that supply might slow down in July.

In contrast to the beginning of the rollout when the Lega administration's moron friends were in charge of it, Lombardy's rollout now seems to be the fastest in Italy rather than one of the slowest.

In terms of first doses Italy is ahead of US, according to OWID. Well done Italy. Of course w.r.t. Delta, its second doses that count, so don't rest on your laurels.

[shpalman]

The rolling average number of deaths per day in Lombardy (pop. 10 million) is just over 2. But today zero were reported, which hasn't happened since last June.

Don't know if it'll last, obviously, but the trend in deaths is still downwards and this isn't just a day-of-the-week effect.

The trend in cases is maybe flat, now, though, at about 110 per day. That does work out to be something like 8/100,000/week though, which isn't much.

Vaccination is still going on at more than half a million doses per day in Italy, and there seem to be decent stocks (currently indicating that 88.8% of delivered doses have been administered, i.e. there's a stock of 6.6 million, enough for nearly two weeks) but I've been hearing that supply might slow down in July.

In contrast to the beginning of the rollout when the Lega administration's moron friends were in charge of it, Lombardy's rollout now seems to be the fastest in Italy rather than one of the slowest.

In terms of first doses Italy is ahead of US, according to OWID. Well done Italy. Of course w.r.t. Delta, its second doses that count, so don't rest on your laurels.

Can't do a second dose unless you've done a first one, but Italy has always just about respected Pfizer's protocol for the gap between doses.

I'm not really keeping track of how many people there are still to do who would be eligible for AstraZeneca under the current rules, which has a bigger gap between doses (it's maybe of the order of 2 million people). But Italy only received in total about 10.4 million AZ doses so far as compared to 41 million Pfizer (and 5.5 million Moderna) and I don't have the breakdown of which doses have been used.

I'm sure it's possible to extract all that information from the csv files in the git repository but if GEDI haven't done it then I sure as f.ck can't be bothered to do it either.

[Herainestold]

The rolling average number of deaths per day in Lombardy (pop. 10 million) is just over 2. But today zero were reported, which hasn't happened since last June.

Don't know if it'll last, obviously, but the trend in deaths is still downwards and this isn't just a day-of-the-week effect.

The trend in cases is maybe flat, now, though, at about 110 per day. That does work out to be something like 8/100,000/week though, which isn't much.

Vaccination is still going on at more than half a million doses per day in Italy, and there seem to be decent stocks (currently indicating that 88.8% of delivered doses have been administered, i.e. there's a stock of 6.6 million, enough for nearly two weeks) but I've been hearing that supply might slow down in July.

In contrast to the beginning of the rollout when the Lega administration's moron friends were in charge of it, Lombardy's rollout now seems to be the fastest in Italy rather than one of the slowest.

In terms of first doses Italy is ahead of US, according to OWID. Well done Italy. Of course w.r.t. Delta, its second doses that count, so don't rest on your laurels.

Can't do a second dose unless you've done a first one, but Italy has always just about respected Pfizer's protocol for the gap between doses.

I'm not really keeping track of how many people there are still to do who would be eligible for AstraZeneca under the current rules, which has a bigger gap between doses (it's maybe of the order of 2 million people). But Italy only received in total about 10.4 million AZ doses so far as compared to 41 million Pfizer (and 5.5 million Moderna) and I don't have the breakdown of which doses have been used.

I'm sure it's possible to extract all that information from the csv files in the git repository but if GEDI haven't done it then I sure as f.ck can't be bothered to do it either.

Have you used up all your AZ doses yet? You can give second doses of Pfizer, as many jurisdictions are doing now. One advantage of Pfizer is the 21 day window allows people to be double dosed quickly if the supply is available.

[shpalman]

Italy has given 9 million AZ doses, out of 10.4 million received, but for example yesterday gave 860 first doses of it compared to 82108 second doses, mainly to the 70-79 age group plus a bit of 60-69. I think the problem isn't running out of them, it's using them up on the increasingly narrow proportion of the population on whom they're effective enough with a low risk of side effects who still want the f.cking things after all the b.llsh.t they've come out with.

The Pfizer based rollout (409349 doses given yesterday) seems to be peaked around giving first doses in the 20-29 age group and second doses in the 50-59 age group, although it's different from region to region (I'm mainly looking at Lombardy).

Italy recently switched to giving an mRNA vaccine as a second dose after AZ (I had two AZ doses) but then switched back to allowing AZ as a second dose with the necessary informed consent.

[shpalman]

... I've been hearing that supply might slow down in July.

Apparently 14.5 million mRNA doses will arrive in July.

[shpalman]

There are apparently people buying false Green Passes on the dark web for €130... presumably for people who don't have an appointment yet for the free vaccine.