Just out of interest, I've been wondering where I might be in the queue for this vaccine. (Of course, the vaccine might not actually materialise - it's still early days. But I for one am certainly hoping that it does.)

Various newspapers have published the following priority list:

Care homes residents and staff
Anyone aged 80 and over, and health and social care workers
Anyone aged 75 and over
Anyone aged 70 and over
Anyone aged 65 and over
High-risk adults under 65
Moderate-risk adults under 65
Anyone aged 60 years and over
Anyone aged 55 and over
Anyone aged 50 and over
Rest of the population (priority to be determined)

According to the first link below, 12.4 million people in the UK are 65 or over. (I'll assume the vast majority of residents in care homes are 65 or over.) According to the second link below, the NHS employs 1.4 million people and social care 1.6 million people. So, I'll assume 'care home staff and health and social care workers' in the priority list amounts to about 3 million people. How many high- and moderate-risk adults under 65 are there? I haven't got a clue, but I'll guess 5% of the under-65 population of about 54 million - i.e., about 2.7 million. So, in total, that's about 18 million people in the categories with higher priority than me. In my category (i.e., 60 - 65) the first link below gives a total of 3.8 million people. So, there will be between about 18 and 22 million people in the queue before me. As I understand it, the Government have pre-ordered enough vaccine for 20 million people. Presumably, though, not everyone will take-up the offer of the vaccine, so it looks as though everyone in the priority list except the last 3 categories should get an offer of a vaccination in the first round, but I'll be pretty close to the bottom of the list.

How long will it all take? I've seen reports in the newspapers that the intention is to administer 1.2 million jabs per week. But everyone will need 2 jabs, so the 40 million jabs will take a minimum of 33 weeks (i.e., 8 months). So, if it all starts by early December I'll be getting my second jab between early July and early August. (That's assuming everything goes according to plan, which ... well, I won't pursue that line of thinking!)

So, if my sums and information are correct, I hope the Government can arrange to administer the vaccine a bit quicker! (I also hope Matt Hancock actually has put a proper pre-order in, and he hasn't just clicked on a link in an email he received which said something like 'buy your cheap Viagra and Covid-19 vaccine here'!) I further hope that one of the other vaccines gets approval pretty soon too. And it would also (probably) help (me) if quite a few people refuse to succumb to the pressure of big pharma and decline the offer of the vaccine.

Still, the world seems a much better place with more reasons for hope and optimism than it did a couple of weeks ago (in my opinion).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...lation-by-age/
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/project...force-overview