Scrutable

Well I just got the email with the link to register for the AstraZeneca vaccine as a university employee under the age of 55 with no pre-existing conditions, and I clicked on it just about as fast as I could make sure I knew what the Italian said.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 02, 2021 4:51 pm

Well I just got the email with the link to register for the AstraZeneca vaccine as a university employee under the age of 55 with no pre-existing conditions, and I clicked on it just about as fast as I could make sure I knew what the Italian said.

Good news.

The deadline for responding to the registration link was Friday, so I hope we can actually start getting jabbed next week.

(Meanwhile Moderna delivered another quarter of a million doses, for a total of (slightly less than) half a million so far, but then they're only aiming to deliver about 1.3 million by the end of this month.)

Meanwhile meanwhile, Como's covid situation is getting bad enough (heading for 300/week/100,000) that we were actually on the national news just now.

While Lombardy is Orange right now, Como will move to "reinforced" Orange which basically means that schools will either close and/or teaching will move to 100% distance learning (depending on age); there are already some localized Red zones within Lombardy (e.g. Brescia I think).

There was a question on our staff mailing list about whether students are allowed to come from zones in which schools are closed to in-person lectures in Milan...

I have a feeling that next week the question will already be moot. But I will for once be slightly annoyed if Lombardy ends up as a Red zone.

Apparently some university staff have already been vaccinated in Milan,* just not from my university yet. But Italy has actually managed to step things up to about 200,000 doses per day this week.

There are still professors on the mailing list saying it's not fair because they're 65 years old they're not in this particular bit of the rollout.

Well, university and school teachers are in the "high priority" part of the "everyone else" group who, if the AstraZeneca vaccine had been recommended by AIFA with no age limits, would be behind all the high-risk age groups and those with pre-existing conditions. So we'd be behind tens of millions of people in the queue and none of us would get vaccinated before the summer anyway. The only reason we're being done now is that as it stands in Italy the AstraZeneca vaccine isn't recommended for those groups (either for lack of efficacy data, or for its efficacy being lower than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines). Anyone who is in one of those groups will be in the queue for the Pfizer vaccine and needs to complain about why Pfizer doses haven't been arriving and why the over-80's rollout in Lombardy has been sh.t in general.

(It was possible even last term for any staff member who feels themselves to be at high risk to ask nicely to be able to give all their lessons remotely.)

* - Local school teachers will be vaccinated at a site which is literally under my house but I'll have to go to Milan for mine; it's not a problem though, as long as the nasty rickety slow local trains are running on that line.

Meanwhile the students had a fight.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:54 pm

Apparently some university staff have already been vaccinated in Milan,* just not from my university yet. But Italy has actually managed to step things up to about 200,000 doses per day this week.

There are still professors on the mailing list saying it's not fair because they're 65 years old they're not in this particular bit of the rollout.

Well, university and school teachers are in the "high priority" part of the "everyone else" group who, if the AstraZeneca vaccine had been recommended by AIFA with no age limits, would be behind all the high-risk age groups and those with pre-existing conditions. So we'd be behind tens of millions of people in the queue and none of us would get vaccinated before the summer anyway. The only reason we're being done now is that as it stands in Italy the AstraZeneca vaccine isn't recommended for those groups (either for lack of efficacy data, or for its efficacy being lower than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines). Anyone who is in one of those groups will be in the queue for the Pfizer vaccine and needs to complain about why Pfizer doses haven't been arriving and why the over-80's rollout in Lombardy has been sh.t in general.

(It was possible even last term for any staff member who feels themselves to be at high risk to ask nicely to be able to give all their lessons remotely.)

* - Local school teachers will be vaccinated at a site which is literally under my house but I'll have to go to Milan for mine; it's not a problem though, as long as the nasty rickety slow local trains are running on that line.

Actually I've heard that somehow, other Milan universities have also managed to obtain - or are expecting to obtain - Pfizer doses for their over-65 or pre-existingly conditioned staff. Not sure how that works since the general over-80's rollout seems to basically be broken right now, in Lombardy at least (messages arriving in the middle of the night for appointments in the morning, confirmed appointments being cancelled last-minute, that sort of thing).

The Italian health ministry will approve the AstraZeneca for over-65's tomorrow

I'm not sure if this is a "great, now the older university professors can also be vaccinated" or a "tell the young university professors to get back in line until we've done the entire over-65 population".

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 07, 2021 6:09 pm

The Italian health ministry will approve the AstraZeneca for over-65's tomorrow

I'm not sure if this is a "great, now the older university professors can also be vaccinated" or a "tell the young university professors to get back in line until we've done the entire over-65 population".

They will give the old dudes AZ and you can wait for Pfizer.
Hold in there.

Pfizer doses are arriving at about 500,000 per week although it seems like there wasn't a delivery last week.

AZ doses have also started arriving at about 500,000 per week.

So maybe 1 million doses a week are arriving. They're distributed according to population of each region so it's about 170,000 arriving in Lombardy each week (Lombardy has received about a million doses so far and used 76% of them).

There's a pdf linked here from February, which goes like this:

1. Health workers
2. Care home residents and workers
3. over-80's (Italy is still on this bit)

(5% coverage)

4. the extremely vulnerable
5. 75-79
6. 70-74
7. 16-69 but at high risk if infected with covid
8. 55-69

(30% coverage)

Teachers, armed forces and police, prison inmates and workers, community services and other essential services are here (and will take us to 50% coverage). The only reason we were being rolled out to now was because AIFA was recommending AZ for categories 4-8.

120,000 over-80's have received doses so far in Lombardy so there's about 600,000 left to do. Then there's about 1 million 70-79.

So that's 10 weeks at current vaccine arrival rates, not counting the 16-69 "at high risk".

Of course, I think the doses were handed over to the universities last week and I don't really expect them to ask for them back.

Not sure what the Politecnico will now do with the high-risk and/or over-65's it told last week not to sign up for an AZ dose...

Just goes to show that only a f.cking idiot tries to plan or organize anything in advance during covid (see also our plan to balance online and in-presence teaching which we discussed for months and lasted exactly two weeks).

A million a week. America does that much before lunch every day.
It will take Italy two years to get everybody jabbed with two doses.
Time to talk to China and Russia.

The USA has more than five times the population (but still, they've given at least one dose to 17% of their population, as compared to 6% in Italy).

In terms of doses per population, Italy is more or less in line with the EU average, it's just that the EU average is f.cking sh.t.

Yes, we're interested in Sputnik V, but it would of course need to be approved by the relevant regulators.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 07, 2021 6:09 pm

The Italian health ministry will approve the AstraZeneca for over-65's tomorrow

indeed it did

Still no update from my university.

School teachers started being vaccinated in Lombardy this morning

*checks email*

Nope.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:39 pm

Pfizer doses are arriving at about 500,000 per week although it seems like there wasn't a delivery last week.

A delivery of about 666,000 Pfizers was registered today on the web counter thingy.

We still only have about a third of the AZ doses which were supposed to have arrived by the end of this month.

Having spoken to Russia there's a plan to make Sputnik V locally https://www.quicomo.it/attualita/corona ... ardia.html

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:45 pm

Having spoken to Russia there's a plan to make Sputnik V locally https://www.quicomo.it/attualita/corona ... ardia.html

By the time they get vaccines from this project, everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be.
I suppose they can be donated to covax

Herainestold wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:22 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:45 pm

Having spoken to Russia there's a plan to make Sputnik V locally https://www.quicomo.it/attualita/corona ... ardia.html

By the time they get vaccines from this project, everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be.
I suppose they can be donated to covax

There'll always be new people reaching the age at which the vaccine is recommended.

But Italy has a vague idea to have done everyone by the end of June if enough doses arrive, so the EMA and AIFA approval of Sputnik V and the ramp up of production in Monza need to be considered in terms of that timescale.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:25 pm

Herainestold wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:22 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:45 pm

Having spoken to Russia there's a plan to make Sputnik V locally https://www.quicomo.it/attualita/corona ... ardia.html

By the time they get vaccines from this project, everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be.
I suppose they can be donated to covax

There'll always be new people reaching the age at which the vaccine is recommended.

But Italy has a vague idea to have done everyone by the end of June if enough doses arrive, so the EMA and AIFA approval of Sputnik V and the ramp up of production in Monza need to be considered in terms of that timescale.

Do you think they can do it? The biggest problem in the EU is vaccine supply, which seems out of the hands of any individual country.
Lots of people want the Sputnik jab, but in Russia itself it hasn't been particularly well received, as people dont trust their own government.

The Johnson n' Johnson one should get approved by EMA tomorrow but they've already indicated that they won't be able to keep up with the delivery schedule.

Meanwhile we had an email earlier today from someone in admin about our university's vaccine rollout, which immediately got retracted and then re-sent from the official communications email address. It basically said "yeah it's been a bit slow since we don't have our own medical facilities so we had to go via some other university's one and the was some organization to do but next week for sure it will start.

"And there's maybe a clinic which can do a few hundred doses over the weekend to get things going a bit faster.

"(This is for the AstraZeneca one; for anyone who needs the Pfizer one for health reasons we'll see if we can get you in at the hospital in north Milan.)

"Should take a couple of weeks (after next week when we start) to do the staff then we'll see if we can do everyone else who works here.

"Sorry we haven't been mailing but frankly we don't really know what's going on either. It changes from one minute to the next."


And then a bit later there was a mail from the covid-vaccination address saying "actually you guys are going to be done at the hospital in the north of Milan in the week 15-19 March so they'll contact you directly."


And then that mail was retracted and replaced by one which says "well there's that clinic at the weekend and that hospital next week so you guys will be contacted by them".

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 7:23 pm

"(This is for the AstraZeneca one; for anyone who needs the Pfizer one for health reasons we'll see if we can get you in at the hospital in north Milan.)

What? That's the first I've heard of there being any health reasons to prefer one over the other. (Unless they're still w.nking on about giving AZ to over-65s.)

Sciolus wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 8:09 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 7:23 pm

"(This is for the AstraZeneca one; for anyone who needs the Pfizer one for health reasons we'll see if we can get you in at the hospital in north Milan.)

What? That's the first I've heard of there being any health reasons to prefer one over the other. (Unless they're still w.nking on about giving AZ to over-65s.)

AIFA now recommends AZ for all age ranges but still prefers the Pfizer or Moderna for people with one of the pre-existing conditions listed in the table in the pdf which I'm not going to link to again.

You cant just come back to the UK and get jabbed here?

Herainestold wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 4:18 am

You cant just come back to the UK and get jabbed here?

Don’t know if you’ve heard, but international travel is more difficult these days. Might make a weekend jaunt impossible anyway.

A post on the "UK Citizens' rights in Italy - Beyond Brexit" facebook group last month said this:

**COVID vaccinations**
To be very clear unless you are in receipt of an S1 (ie UK pensioner or in receipt of certain UK benefits) Italy is your competent state for healthcare.
This means you are neither entitled to a UK GP nor a UK COVID vaccine.
Travel to in and out of the UK except for exceptional circumstances is actually illegal at the moment.
I am staggered that people are actually travelling across countries during a pandemic with travel restrictions in place in order to get ahead of the queue in Italy. Are you really that selfish?
If you really are that selfish we, the admins, kindly request you discuss your plans outside this group.