UKH

Just under half a million. There’s a clear pattern: lowest figures reported early in the week (I guess for jabs given over the weekend, when some places shut?), numbers increasing through the week with highest figures reported Saturday then Sunday (I guess data submitted late for jabs given during the week).

Guestimated that the mid Feb target will be surpassed by about a million. 
To anyone involved - your ace, thanks. 

I see the govt reckon, at current rates, 15.9 million first dose by 15th Feb. They are confident that by mid May all over 50’s (and I assume all vulnerable adults) will have had their first jab, and also by this date all the top priority people will have to have had their second. 
 

Yep, this bit. If anyone involved is reading this, I'd buy you a pint if I could.

That could be a very expensive round.  Lucky the pubs are shut.

Yes, it would indeed be a pretty big round. But, given that my seventy-plus parents have both now had their first jabs ......

We are doing some volunteering at a centre tomorrow.  I have been allocated controlling the exit door. Don't recall submitting a CV....how did they sus my competence level so accurately!?

One of my friends is running a vaccination centre. Up until fairly recently she was at an energy company trying to sort out their Smart Meter rollout but decided to change to doing something more worthwhile. It's amazing, she's so overwhelmingly happy to be working on such a significant project that I reckon she'd do it for nowt.

Great news about the vaccination numbers but just as a word of caution the following research paper is worth reading

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.21250612v1.full.pdf

It refers to the Pfizer vaccination effort in Israel and suggests that 2 vaccine doses are required for full effect. 

Hopefully, the 1 dose AZ vaccination effort in the UK will produce similar results and we will soon have real world figures to show that it does.

PS. If you struggle to get through the research paper mentioned above you might like to read the DM take on this

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9231069/Israels-vaccine-magic-wipe...

although that refers to a different research paper. The comments at the end of the article are typically insightful.

For a different take on this and access to a FT article normally behind a paywall see the following.

https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1357715616053014528

As a follow on, and not wishing to belittle anyone’s effort, the following is worth a look.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccinated-covid?tab=...

More encouraging is Professor Anthony Harnden’s statement on LBC today

https://amp.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/tom-swarbrick/one-dose-strategy-coul...

saying that UK data to be released in the next week or two will show that one dose of the Pfizer vaccine is over 70% effective.

Whilst it is a great performance to vaccinate so many, I hope the success doesn't distract from the multitude of errors, lies, deceit and cronyism perpetrated by Johnson in the last year.

This mass vaccination drive might soon be added to Johnson's long list of failures. The vaccines are already proving less effective against new strains, particularly the Oxford one which wasn't even properly tested before being deployed on a large scale 

Per capita UK deaths from covid on ONS numbers are the highest of any sizeable country in the world. Around another 10,000 minimum more will die in this wave from those being infected now and those in hospital. We are looking at over a 100,000 preventable covid deaths and probably double that with long covid (a significant fraction of whom will die this year, with the greatest risks for the under 70s). It's carnage.

Many dedicated health and care workers died unnecessarily because our PPE system was initially in a complete mess. Many more are traumatised by what they have faced in the last 12 months. We already had a national shortage of health and care workers.

Care homes were ravaged because of freeing up hospital beds by sending infected patients back home with insufficient ability to provide infection control. Care homes were badly hit in this wave because the government vaccinated care homes too late.

Late lockdowns means longer lockdowns which means more disruption and preventable death from other illness. All estimates are in the tens of thousands for deaths from other illness due to covid disruption, mostly disrupted cancer detection and treatment.

We had two weeks extra notice of what was coming in March compared to all the other EU countries hit hard yet we, an island nation, ended up worst hit.

Locally, my city had a massive peak of deaths from October because the government felt it was a good idea students should return to Uni when all the data said otherwise.

Billions were spent on  a faulty TT&I system that failed to function anything like it should leaving the virus to spread much more than it could.

Even on the fantastic vaccination efforts the best I can say about the government is they let people who knew what they were doing get on with it for once. We still have problems with vaccinating the vulnerable in the BAME communities and old people who can't travel from home. Scotland got flack for being slow to start compared to England because they focused on the most vulnerable first (which is best to do but slower work) they now are in front of England.

We have no idea where the future will take us with new variants that largely come into the UK through our unnecessarily porous borders.

"This mass vaccination drive might soon be added to Johnson's long list of failures. The vaccines are already proving less effective against new strains, particularly the Oxford one which wasn't even properly tested before being deployed on a large scale."

That's just b*llocks. Firstly the government had little to do with the testing (thank goodness) and the only serious testing issue was a lowish number of over 65s exposed to the virus..... which is an pretty big ethical issue in tests as if the virus didn't work in testing they had a significant chance of death or long term illness. Current results look good except against some variants they were never designed to deal with. Even there it looks like hospitalisations and deaths will be significantly reduced and the Oxford team are already working on new vaccines targeted at the stubborn strains.

Thanks for using the button imaginatively to agree most of our government efforts to protect our population in a pandemic have been terrible. Feel free to dislike this for the same reasons.

One of the dislikes is mine.

Not because I disagree with your comments about the government’s handling of the pandemic but because, according to the title, this is a thread about vaccinations today.

I'm in no mood to celebrate a professional response to a situation we never should have been in in the first place. We were fast on ordering vaccine as the scientists hit the ground running in Jan 2000 as much as anything else. ONS deaths are likely to be still around 1000 a day on average right now because of this idiot government delays before xmas. Flag waving seems to me to be a bit of an insult to all those families and friends grief. Our vaccination effort is good so far but we have a long way to go.

Don't forget financial protections in this pandemic went from very good initially to mostly good but with a unfathomable failure to close some gaping holes affecting millions (either due to unfair specific employment status or in poor financial support for the lower paid for self isolation).

Feel free to thumbs down in support of highlighting the mess.

I think it's perfectly correct to remind everyone that, whilst the progress of the vaccination programme is good news, it should not cover up the utter disaster that the rest of the government's response has been. They must not be allowed to get away with it.

Feel free to criticise the government all you want.

But maybe do it on another thread so as not to derail this one.

Which I took to be not so much a flag waving one but one where actual numbers of vaccinations could be reported and those issuing the vaccinations could be appreciated.

Does the public need reminding about the government’s mistakes?

I still suggest that this is not the thread to do it on.

There are numerous sites and almost ubiquitous news reports publishing daily updates which are genuine good news. What we need to know if we are interested in transparency is where any remaining serious issues are.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2265004-we-must-start-publishing-ethni...

I appreciate your opinion on my posts on this thread but I respectfully disagree (....not for the first time but with respect for your opinion).

Unfortunately I've got some bad news for all of us who (rightly) hold Bunter in complete and utter contempt.

It looks like (according to Roy Lilley, and others) that he may actually be contemplating doing the right thing by the NHS: scrapping the 'internal market', cutting back on private sector involvement, rationalising management  and integrating the whole shebang under an (accountable) minister...

Hard to believe, really. 

Yes; heard that discussed the other day.

I have no surprise at all with this action. The NHS market was always an expensive bureaucratic political own goal and this government desperately needs the money. I'm ashamed that the more sensible wing of the tory party in coalition with LibDems instigated this expensive NHS change based on no manifesto mandate. Don't forget they gutted public health in England in the process.

I think he would have loved to cancel the HS2 white elephant as well if he wasn't under so much pressure to give the impression of investment to benefit the north (a bogus justification as north to north investment of the same size would achieve way more).

Let's wait and see what other reforms will be 'vital' that will have much less universal support. All 'needed' as a 'need to start balancing the books' is certain from Sunak when the pandemic is over. I'd lay strong odds public sector pensions will be near the top of the list.  Progessives of all parties in marginal constituencies who couldn't bring themselves to vote tactically gave this populist ego monster and his cabinet of crooks, toadies and incompetents a very healthy working majority to cause carnage.

I pretty much agree with all that. It's just that one can imagine the Buffoon playing the jingoistic card at the next election and comparing ' his' vaccination strategy with that of the EU. Numbers of jabs on a side of a bus? ( Rather than number of excess deaths!)

The latest evidence of real issues that contradicts the jingoistic bs.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/09/tens-of-thousands-of-uk-nur...

Add the news yesterday that over 70s should no longer wait for an appointment but should now contact the vaccination services directly (I wonder if Matt Hancock has tried using those direct contact systems?). I guess many will be forced through frustration to take the longer, less hassle, route through their GP (as if practices are not busy enough!).

To be clear, the numbers are great but the government promised everyone in the most at risk groups would be offered a vaccination slot before the deadlines, not most of them and making up those numbers by vaccinating others.

You're just looking for something to get upset about here.
Saying something along the lines of 'get in touch if we've missed you for whatever reason' seems pretty reasonable to me.

Almost the opposite. I'd have preferred the government said we will try and ensure everyone in the highest risk groups are offered the vaccine first and to plan for that but we won't get too hung up the detail as pace and logistical reality is important as well. It would have been nice if they took evidence based risk approaches seriously rather than slagging off other countries (especially the Scottish approach, which did seem to be more evidenced based, in particular an initial focus on care homes where risk was defined as highest in the UK but slower to deal with, and yet Scotland now look closer to meeting the deadline at target than England, because they did those most at risk, trickier to access and more time consuming cases first, and saved proportionally more lives in care homes in the third wave than England did). I've linked pleas from GP's to PHE saying please let us in care homes (where there has just been a case) as we will save lives.

The scientists and scientific funders of vaccines were wonderfully prescient in Jan 2020 and when the government finally realised the seriousness of what they faced the vaccine organisation was already up and running. Local front line vaccination centres have been fabulous. The ministerial crowing is an obvious distraction from serious failings, most of the success is not particularly based on their actions and the English approach isn't as evidenced based as it should be (much less so than Scotland).

It is possible to celebrate the success of our vaccination programmes, properly pointing out where public thanks are most due, whilst pointing out we have some vulnerable groups in England where things are not going so well. Also not to be happy with a government being jingoistic about things when their slow actions led to many tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and avoidable extended economic damage.

But they had everything to do with the approval

But approval in the UK was for all age sectors

These variants are now the problem

Tranmissibility will therefore be even higher! 

Ready by autumn they say. How many times will the virus have mutated by then! 

To be fair, even if we'd managed a zero-covid year or something near to it, we'd be in need of the vaccine if we didn't want to spend all eternity in isolation from the rest of the world.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Absolutely.  The government appear to be trying to gaslight the whole population over their handing off this.  I actually feel sorry for the people who have bought in to it and now spend their time defending the government's handling of this.  My poor neighbour nearly exploded after seeking my views and going straight to a familiar kind of "defend the government".  He launched in to "So, you're an expert I suppose".  He didn't react very well to what I had to say about my various fields of expertise.  Pure but luckily coincidence - a "Sold" sign went up on their house the next day...  

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

Indeed - it seems perfectly sensible; once they think they've done a cohort, invert the communications to find anyone they've reached.  The main problem appears to be that GP surgeries had almost no notice to prepare their switchboards for the influx.  The one on the local radio today said they basically got their news about it from Hancock's briefing last night.

In reply to Baron:

Second time in a week you've played the "This isn't the thread for that" card when it comes to criticism of the government.  Pure coincidence, I'm sure.  Word to the wise though - read your posts through to make sure you're not breaking your own "rule" this time...

In reply to Big Bruva:

I think you've got the wrong end of several sticks.  Even if - almost totally inconceivably - the vaccine program doesn't make much difference, I would still consider it a success for all involved, including the PM, because they genuinely have done a phenomenal amount of work, and it has all gone incredibly, expectation surprisingly well despite the strained times.  I can't complain when people genuinely try their best.  I think you're looking to poke several holes in it that aren't backed up by the evidence but have been used to sow FUD on the subject.  

I’m glad that you’re keeping count of my posts.

But I haven’t got a clue what you’re on about.

Nothing special about you, I just tend to remember discussions for a year or two.

Protracted exchange from 4 days ago.  Then, as now, you come in not as the OP but as a 3rd party, to try and shoot down a discussion by suggesting this thread (which isn’t “yours”, and where the OP hasn’t complained) isn’t the place for the discussion.

As it happens, both times you happened to be trying to shoot down criticism of the government.  Coincidence, I’m sure.

You and many others seem obsessed that the government’s actions or inactions will somehow be forgotten. And so threads which have nothing to do with the past actions of the government become derailed by criticism of said actions.

It would be nice to be able to read a thread such as the Vaccinations Today thread without having to read a rehash of what the government did wrong.

You haven’t forgotten the government’s failings and neither have I.

What makes you think that others will forget?

And if you’re not concerned that people will forget why the need to keep regurgitating the same criticism?

I challenge you to find *one* example of me stating or hinting that I am concerned that their actions or inactions will be forgotten.  Go on - you’ve made a direct accusation against me, is it evidenced or is it prejudiced?  

I think it would be nice to read a thread without one of several posters jumping in to try and shut certain discussions down on a regular basis.

If you’d been paying attention, you’d notice that the criticism has been evolving constantly over the last 12 months.

Are you saying the *only* reason something should be discussed more than once is because of concern people will otherwise forget?   

https://lmgtfy.app/?q=strawman+argument

It would be nice if posters didn’t try to derail threads on a regular basis.

But it’s never a discussion. It’s the same group of people regurgitating the same criticism and backing each other up.

No.  You were taking about forgetting.  Gaslighting means something different - convincing the gullible it never happened at all, so that there is/was nothing to forget.

I think if the OP wants to suggest that they can.  For other people to do so is a bit weird, and it starts to stand out as beyond coincidence when they only ever do so when it comes to criticism of the current government.  Perhaps you’ll start shutting down other off-topic divergences on other threads if it annoys you so, no?

Ah, an echo chamber!  Next you’ll be asserting that all opinions are equally valid.  On this thread I see disagreement between various posters of broadly similar evidenced stances.  As I do on almost all threads; there’s very very rarely total agreement.

I have seen the criticism evolve strongly over the last year.  If it sounds like regurgitation to you, perhaps that’s because the government has repeated the same type of mistakes over and over - but each time it’s a new realisation that in itself is worth discussing.  Perhaps this subtly has passed you by.

pedantry. Or is it semantics? 

I don’t have the power to shut down any thread.

If you don’t think that UKC has become an echo chamber on some topics then you aren’t as observant as you think.

There’s nothing subtle about the criticism of the government on UKC. As I said, there’s little if any discussion just rehashing the past. 

No it isn’t.  Deliberately misleading people into what they believe is totally different to people forgetting.;

Sorry I should have said “trying to”

If it was an echo chamber like you claim, a dozen others would be piling on you and I’d not be gathering dislikes as I am.  I see the same range of opinions on here as I see in real life.  The difference is I don’t see the beetroot faces and spittle flying.

As I said it only seems like rehashing to you because the same mistake have been repeated multiple times.  I’ve seen a lot of nuanced discussion between posters with directly relevant backgrounds where specific decisions are picked apart with different people taking different stances in defence or attack of the decision.  

There’s disagreement and discussion at almost every level.  

12,646,486 people vaccinated so far. Well done to all concerned.

Apologies for hijacking your thread.

I agree about being fair but you can be pretty sure with the virus better under control our vaccination schedule would be with a standard 3 week gap, much less panicked and most of those 2000 odd latest deaths in care homes in the third wave and tens thousand or more outside wouldn't have happened.

The news tonight is perhaps the most bizarre cognitive dissonance regulatory incompetence yet: threats of huge fines or long jail terms contrasted with trivial to bypass controls from banned countries (by flying via another hub) and no controls at all for other countries with clear evidence of significant infections of problem variants.

I’m not so sure about 3 weeks; that mainly came about - as I understand it - from wanting to do the trials as fast as possible, and longer gaps are looking perhaps to be beneficial, and there were good reasons to believe that would be the case, as well as chances to revise the schedule if the developing evidence doesn’t support it.

I agree though, if we had been competent from mid December in our approach since it was clear lockdown was failing due to the “Kent” variant, then we would have 10s of thousands fewer deaths, a health service that was not largely reduced to single disease operations with triaging effectively going on, and without the immediate pressure to vaccinate, and net less school closures.  I did what I could from Dec 15th to demonstrate that the new variant was breaking lockdown in a way that was propagating out from Kent.  It has since become clear to me that the “internal” data not available to the state also made this clear.  I don’t understand why lockdown came 3 weeks later.  This is very similar to the observation that the lockdowns in March 2019 and November 2020 were both weeks too late to a clear net detriment, for example the lateness of the November one likely allowing the “Kent” variation to emerge.  However, noting repeat instances of the same basic issue is not regurgitation. 

That data analysis spotting the Kent variant so early was probably the best piece of science ever to be initially published on a climbing website.

I also think those of us living in Kent should get some credit for creating it  

I'd give very good odds if we had access to the multiverse, so that we could see what Boris would have done with lower infection numbers, our times between first and second dose would be the same as every other country. Those particular low covid universes with Boris as PM and a large majority would be very rare as he seemed doomed not to take restrictions seriously until it was too late...so we would be in a mess in most.

My sister's vaccination duties are on hold at the moment, as the booking system seems to have failed... which bit of the process is contracted out...?

This is the first time I ever hear someone judging a government on the effort they put in rather than their policy decisions. It's not school sports day! 

The evidence strongly suggests that the Oxford AZ vaccine is less effective on variants, particularly the SA one. It's efficacy on over 65s, the age group with the vast majority of deaths, has never been established. These are evidence-based observations. 

I get the feeling that after gushing over the (organizational) success of the UK vaccine program, many UKC contributers are now unwilling to critically assess the science behind it. 

I guess the ironic reference to a comment by the PM in my choice of language passed you by.

Let me spell it out more.  I mean that they committed serious resources (not just money) to the vaccine program, they ensured significant production would happen within our borders, they backed multiple successful candidates well before their efficacy was known, and they've got production of the Novovax one happening in the UK - this can be adapted to new strains without concern over immunity to the carrier virus, and doesn't have such complex supply and distribution chains as the other non-carrier vaccines.  It has been a well run series of programs right from the early months thorough the trials and manufacturing, and the roll out is shaping up well.  This is the sort of thing I can agree with the PM on when he says "did the best we could".  Would that other aspects of managing the pandemic fell under the same language.

Yes, that's been discussed quite a lot on here.  You can't blame the vaccination program for that, and that is what is/was being discussed.  Magic future proof vaccines aren't really a thing.  Perhaps a future vaccine could use the membrane fusion protein as well - if doing so doesn't mess within anything human -to reduce the chance of successful immune evasion.  Likely a lot more complicated and not something that could have been done this fast.

Yes, but what's your point caller?  Should we have delayed the vaccine roll out, or should we take everything we know about virology, immunology and evidenced based medicine and proceed on the bases that is's likely to work, whilst continually monitoring and re-evaluating as we go?  Ideally we'd not have performed so badly at controlling the pandemic that we were forced in to such a dynamic roll out, but given the evidence (which despite many claims to the contrary is not solely the trials, but everything else that's known and can be used to estimate outcomes) I do not see the problem here with the decisions - more with how we came to make them.  Actual experts sat and thought about everything they know, of which the trials to date were one piece of evidence.  

I guess you've not read some of the other discussions on here then.  A lot of the issues you mention have been discussed with evidence and expert input at times.  There's a lot more than just organisational success to the UK vaccine program.  

All those over 70s told to contact the service by Matt? This is a known problem when you prioritise lower risk low hanging fruit first then tell all those left to use a national website at the same time. We will still easily hit the apparent target next week on numbers but the actual target was everyone in the high risk groups offered a first dose vaccination by mid Feb, not that same number topped up by a lot of others from lower risk groups.

I'm not getting at the fantastic speed and effectiveness of the front line vaccination programme over this;  more that greater thought should have been given on to how to deal with those at especially high risk but harder to reach (as Scotland did). This is personal as it includes a highly vulnerable home cared relative over 85 who is still waiting for an appointment despite numerous GP contacts over weeks. Individual home vaccinations take time. Being slower than Scotland on care home vaccinations also had a price ...we had 5000+ covid deaths ( ONS data) in care homes in January 2021. Van Tan expressed concern on BAME issues today.

As this is the vaccinations reported today thread I thought people might find the attached graphs interesting, very clear weekly patterns for number of daily doses given. Data taken from the daily update spreadsheets found here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vacci... so it's for England only. I'm sure these graphs must be out there somewhere but I've not seen the daily doses one before, probably just not looking in the right place.

here? https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations

Haha, yes, evidently I didn't search very well atall.

It might be largely weather related, but we are not vaccinating as many people as we were a week ago. 

Or here... BBC News covid stats page...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-51768274

Weather won't help, but people aren't able to book; there was a thread discussing a booking app problems here, but it's gone. My sister isn't being called in, as there aren't sufficient bookings. She has proposed a "single rider" system (a skiing chairlift analogy) to fill the gaps, offering to any reserved workers (police, firefighters, teachers, etc) who haven't yet been done.

An ineffective vaccine could prove more detrimental to transmission rates than no vaccine at all. That should be obvious. 

Also, why call me 'caller'? Is this another attempt at irony, a poorly disguised rhetorical technique or something else altogether? Intrigued! 

Why should that be obvious?  It doesn't seem obvious to me...

The early suggestions are that current vaccines are likely to prevent many hospitalisations and deaths from variants like the SA one, and that those have been the major problem to date - because we have a very old demographic in the UK compared to many countries, and because the hospitalisation and death rates increase exponentially with age.

If the vaccine was truly ineffective against a new variant, then it is likely that naturally acquired immunity would be likewise ineffective, and so it would be more like two independent, simultaneous pandemics and the vaccine would help close the old one out and wouldn't affect the new one.  We are nowhere near that situation.

It's a turn of phrase.  It indicate I don't really understand what your point is.  To be fair it's a few decades past it's time.  

It's obvious to me that someone who wrongly thinks they are immune will take less precautions than someone who is aware they risk catching and spreading the virus. A 'vaccine passport' policy would officialise this behaviour. 

I think the messaging on the vaccines has been very clear to date, and if a new variant emerges where the vaccine doesn't protect people, then the messaging can be changed - and we'll be back in to lockdown measures PDQ to boot.

So I don't see what the problem is here.

546k first doses just reported. The total first doses vaccinated is:

14,556,827

Basically, the mid Feb target (14.6 mill)  has been reached with a couple of days to go. Incredible stuff!  

The target has not been met. Lots of folk in the top priority groups are yet to be offered a slot, for Monday at the latest. A close relative of mine is highly vulnerable and over 85 and after pressuring his GP for weeks we finally have a slot for Monday @3:00pm.... if someone like that with middle class pressure only just makes the cut imagine what its like for others. In contrast locally to me they were handing out spare Pfizer vaccines to anyone around. I know quite a few folk in their late 6Os who have been jabbed, in the most efficient vaccinating areas. So just how many off those jabs are not top priority?

This is not knocking the vaccination programme it's just pointing out the actual target the government set has not been reached, a target that Wales has reached and Scotland will soon (and Boris and co critisised both for being slow). I'd also much rather spare Pfizer vaccine is used rather than wasted. England didn't plan for the harder to reach groups properly and Wales and Scotland were better at that.

Using spare isn't as random as some think. Towards the end of a vaccination session it becomes plainly obvious how many spare doses are available. The clerical staff hit the phones to get suitable individuals in; sharpish!

I’ve had an invitation text tonight, and have my first jab next week. I’m not too sure why, unless it’s linked to work, but I’m certainly not complaining. 

Scotland's vaccination campaign is going crazy at the moment getting jags into arms:

https://twitter.com/Porrohman1/status/1360152057144102912/photo/1

They already hit the 1 million jag mark (population 5.4 million).

TBF England is doing pretty well, better than most countries bar Israel, UAE and Scotland.

The US is behind them but ahead of many others which is promising.

the reducing of hospitalizations and death after 1 jab is massive. Obviously transmission remains an issue and people are getting mild covid still but it is really taking the strain off the medical system.

Overall broadly similar outcome though - as you’ve observed previously Scotland did the hard to access cases first, and now is hoovering up the low hanging fruit.

what’s weird is the second dose data - england at 469k and Scotland at 11k - that’s really odd, maybe again an artefact of the efforts Scotland have been putting into the hard to reach? 

My wife is a teacher and her name has gone down on a ‘list’. Chances are it’s the spare vaccines - they are being given to key worker type people  etc ? (I had mine las Tuesday at very short notice - about one hour !!). 

It clearly can become random if not enough less random people can be contacted in time. That's still a good thing in my view if that vaccine will be binned otherwise.

That is strange since from all the public statements it clearly isn't policy.    Perhaps the deliveries have been exceeding the number of people turning up and that surplus has turned into lots of second doses.  There are press stories of Hancock threatening doctors who use vaccine for second doses even if it would otherwise be discarded.

It could also be a variation in how they've organised the distribution.  If the refrigerated storage is closer to the vaccinators they wont need to take as much out at once.