These dates are largely in line with a model made by the University of Warwick and given to Sage several weeks ago. He suggested that the best way for the UK to avoid another major spike in deaths is to keep the national lock down until the end of May and then revert to the social speed rules that apply. they were in place in early September for the rest of the year.
If the UK applied Israeli criteria but only required one dose of vaccine, the deadlines for schools, non-essential shops and restaurants would move to the end of February and mid to late March respectively.
Both the UK and Israel have been distributing vaccines at a rapid pace but Israel, with a population of 9.05 million, is still far ahead of the UK.
The proportion of the Israeli population who received a single dose of vaccine was 41.6 per cent, compared with 18.6 per cent in the UK on Wednesday, according to the Our World in Data website run by Oxford University. But if you compare those who received the vaccine as a whole (two doses), the figures are bare and stand at 25.7 and just 0.76 per cent respectively.
Politicians and officials in the UK may also need to pay attention to the different vaccines used and their effectiveness.
Israel uses the Pfizer injection only. It is thought to offer greater protection against both disease and transmission than the AstraZeneca vaccine which is a key part of the UK campaign.
The Pfizer vaccine is also thought to offer better protection against variants of the virus that contains E484K mutations, including the rays of South Africa and Brazil.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer, noted on Monday that these changes were unlikely to dominate the UK for at least “a few months”. as they do not have a distribution advantage over the current UK version.
Most experts agree that this is correct but point out, how antibodies build the population to the UK variety – either through natural diseases or vaccine – changes in E484K mutations will have a comparative advantage and growth as they are not protected.
“When population immunity is low, higher intrinsic transmission is more important, but as immunity grows, there is also the benefit of changes that can avoid this immunity,” he said. epidemiologist Adam Kucharski, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine noted Tuesday.
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