It's a bit more complicated. In France vaccination has only been open to everyone one month ago, (and those people - including me - only had one dose so far) and in the UK the waiting time between the first and second dose is roughly twice higher than in most countries, which means there's still a significant fraction of the population that just can't get fully vaccinated yet (my brother must wait another month before getting his second shot).
It probably hasn't been (or has barely been) a couple of months since someone not in a higher risk group could have easily been fully vaccinated (2 weeks after second shot).
This isn’t quite right. The UK has delayed second doses to 3 months after the first dose to enable more people to get their first dose quicker. The plan is all adults vaccinated by September, and they certainly aren’t delaying second doses until then.
How long ago was the second shot? There's a reason why Europe accelerated the start of the Booster vaccinations (third shots). Unfortunately there's still a lot of people that didn't receive their first shot willingly although it's freely available.
You need to get one booster shot after your infection in France to get a pass (instead of two shots for the usual vaccination course). That has always been the case.
The UK's policy of making sure everyone gets their first dose of the two dose vaccines before most everyone gets their second, setting the second dose at 3 months instead of 3-4 weeks.
OP is correct, the link you've posted shows that around 600,000 have had 2 doses, and over 15 million have had 1.
The UK is pushing to get all 'at risk' people one dose (around 49% of people getting the vaccine) as a priority, with the second dose following within 12 weeks.
This is interesting. In canada we had a longer waiting time between the shots because of lack of supply. People who got it earliest (older, etc) generally had a 12 week waiting time I think though it may have been shortened as we got more supply. I got my first (pfizer) as soon as I was eligible, and could get my second 8 weeks later. I think people that got their first shot later could wait a much shorter time, i.e. the recommended 3/4 weeks. It would be interesting to see if its possible to disentangle the effects of the way they were rolled out in different countries to see how much of a difference timing makes.
Full speed vaccination (more than 200K/week, up to 600K in late July) started late March, beginning of April, so we must wait 6 months from second dose to see if the vaccine protection holds up and how it affects population immunity.
My arm chair prediction is that we will have another wave in December/January.
Unfortunately several European countries consider people with 2 shots unvaccinated by now, and more countries are scheduled to follow that strategy. France, Italy and Austria are the ones I know of.
They consider the original 2nd shot to "expire" after 6 months, so you are forced to take the booster unless you want to live like a hermit.
I strongly dislike this.
Vaccines come in multiple doses. Some countries space out each dose every other month, others do it every two or three months. It varies. The US schedule is similar but not the same as many countries in the EU.
Big pharma also keeps pushing cocktail shots, multiple vaccinations in one single shot, whereas before you would take multiple visits and each time it would be a separate vaccine.
First dose is not sufficient for access to restricted activities, and the second dose requires a waiting period of 2-3 weeks AFAIK. Then there's the likely possibility of requiring a third dose (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eu-covid-passes-set-to-ex...), making coordination even more difficult.
Adding to that some people believe (uh oh) that you're also taking on higher risks of life threatening adverse reactions for each subsequent dose.
The announcement [0] says they are going to prioritize everyone in risk groups getting their first shot over some people getting two, and as a result might have up to 12 weeks between the two shots. That seems like a reasonable way of dealing with the supply constraints, without entirely throwing out the protocol established via testing.
The UK has been vaccinating for more than 12 weeks now and the evidence shows that people aren't getting infected in that time period once they've had their first dose.
The other thing you allude to is the timing. I'm in Canada too, and got my shots 8 weeks apart which was the earliest possible due to availability. For people that got their first shot early, I think the delay is even longer. And now I believe it's back to the manufacturer recommendations.
I understood there are studies that say a longer delay may be better, so I'd be curious too how the result here translates to people who had a much longer time between shots. Was the UK also in this situation?
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