Visiting European Countries

Oh I am absolutely certain it will happen I was just surprised about the timescale.

Yeah agreed my gut feeling from the earlier rumblings about this was that they were thinking like last time of doing the more elderly first, I felt that I might be lucky to get a booster vaccine by November.

I would like a booster vaccine in November or earlier as it would make me more confident about trying to get to the Philippines for Christmas, and November would be about the 6 month mark for me regards time since second dose.

edit: I definitely want to get a flu vaccine in September though, not sure how that works can you just call in at a pharmacy or do you have to wait to be offered like COVID?

The operative bit here is 'After those groups, it will be'. I think the under 70 group might end up waiting a bit.

If they are going to do boosters at all they need to have completed the rollout to these groups by early November or it will have been pointless, January is too late for most people.

The thing I am wondering is whether they will mix the vaccines this time i.e. the next dose could be Pfizer for the older Demographic, the reason this would be a good idea is that the AZ vaccine was based on a portion of the spike protein and a chimp adenoviral vector, whereas Pfizer mRNA vaccine replicates the full original spike protein of the original Wuhan strain.

AZ has two potential problems lower coverage of the spike protein and the chimp adenovirus, there were worries that the first dose could result in your body mounting a partial response to the adenovirus itself as well as the spike protein thus making the reaction to the second dose less effective than it otherwise might have been.

A booster using Pfizer, Moderna or Novavax could force a broader antibody response and potentially a better T-Cell and B-Cell response, likewise Pfizer doses might be better boosted by a third dose using an alternative technology rather than the mRNA tech.

The likelihood is that the rare clotting issues with AZ were due to incorrect technique when administering the injection, some think that the plunge it in and press approach was wrong as in some it may have missed the muscle and gone direct into the bloodstream, apparently pulling back a bit to check for blood is the recommended way that old school nurses would have used, but this was not always the case during this vaccination program.

So it would be good if younger people could get AZ as a third dose.

Thanks John!

A five week tour? Are you retired John?

Ah of course, I carried 19 days from last year, but policy has forced half of those to be used this year and the remainder to be carried over to next year.

Cool!