Positive news on a new vaccine – the third in as many weeks – is a welcome bit of encouragement during the dark days of winter. As we move towards the solstice and the shortest day/longest night of the year there is a real hope that as we move past it we will also be moving, literally and metaphorically, towards spring. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is cheap, relatively easy to store at normal fridge temperatures and, according to Phase 3 test data just released, extremely effective (though later in the week some questions were raised about the reliability of some of the underlying data which will need to be resolved). There are some quirks for sure; for reasons that are not yet seemingly clear even to the scientists a half dose followed by a full dose of vaccine a few weeks later appears to be more effective than two full doses. Yet if true even that is good news as it means there is more vaccine to go round. Also extremely positive is the news that the trial population included a number of older citizens who are most vulnerable to the virus and its terrible effects and they seem to be well protected by the vaccine. To layer on yet another dollop of good news, even those who did not appear to benefit from the vaccine in terms of stopping the virus altogether still apparently gained something from it, for according to press reports none of them was hospitalised.
It is an important moment to take stock of the situation and assess where we are. If I may be forgiven for mixing my metaphors there is certainly the glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel but there are bumps in the road ahead. The light at the end of the tunnel will hopefully become ever brighter until we hopefully, according to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock, emerge into daylight some time after Easter where the talk is of a return to some sort of normality. For many it will be an exciting prospect and a much needed breath of optimism in what have been all too depressing times.
There are though as I say bumps ahead too. First of all there are practical issues to do with the vaccine. The most immediate one is to gain regulatory approval for all of those which could be used. There are several steps to this process though government sources say they do not have to be long ones. Much will depend on the quality of the trial data and the safety information that supports it. Several scientists have been interviewed this week who have said that whilst they welcome the good news in the press releases, they would much rather have peer reviews and trial data to trawl over. That's perhaps what one would expect scientists to say but in this case they are surely right. There are a significant number of ‘anti-vaxxers’ in the world and the government has already said that they will not be forcing anyone to get inoculated. That said, there may be more subtle persuasion in terms of limitations on what those who are not vaccinated can do; Qantas announced this week that, once vaccines have been rolled out, you will need to show that you have had a Covid jab if you wish to fly on the airline. In any event, regulatory approval which goes through the right mechanisms is an important step in building public confidence in the vaccines.
Easter too is a few months off yet (I checked – in 2021 it falls on 4 April). Between now and then there are some risks to manoeuvre around. It is the winter season when people tend to stay indoors for longer and traditionally the risk of flu (and probably Covid too) is at its highest. There is a risk of infections rising followed by hospitalisations and sadly deaths too. The risk is compounded by the loosening of restrictions over Christmas even for a few days. Modellers expect that this will add to the upward pressures on infection rates with its associated knock-on effects. Restrictions will very possibly need to be tightened after Christmas and particularly for those businesses in the highest risk areas, such as those in the hospitality sector in the highest tiers in the four home nations, it may be a very bleak winter too.
Yet for all that these are real bumps in the road, there is a greater hope of arriving somewhere brighter in the foreseeable future than there has been for months. Much will depend on how quickly vaccines can be produced in bulk (assuming they are duly approved) and then vaccination programmes on a huge scale rolled out. These are practical problems that need to be addressed but there is hope that they can be. Whilst 2020 has been for most a stark and challenging year, there is the prospect that 2021 can be a brighter one all round. Let's hope that the causes for optimism continue to escalate as we go forward from here.
Wayne Bartlett is an author for accountingcpd. To see his courses, click here.
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