Suspension of the 15-minute wait for vaccination with mRNA vaccine for Covid-19

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/suspension-of-the-15-minute-wait-for-vaccination-with-mrna-vaccine-for-covid-19-uk-cmos-opinion/suspension-of-the-15-minute-wait-for-vaccination-with-mrna-vaccine-for-covid-19-uk-cmos-opinion

by open-source-ux • 5 years ago

57 121 5 years ago

gov.uk

jjgreen2• 5 years ago

For the second dose, as I walked out of the clinic an old-boy volunteer approached me: "Excuse me, which vaccine did you have?", "Astra-Zeneca" I replied. "Oh, OK then, we asking all of the people who have the other vaccines to wait in this tent for 15 minutes, there have been some cases of fainting ...", he leaned a bit closer, "... mostly women."

mnd999• 5 years ago

Your point is some of the volunteers are clueless and sexist?

This article states the 15 min wait is about anaphylaxis, not fainting.

jjgreen2• 5 years ago

He probably was a bit sexist in the way that old people can be, not necessarily malicious about it. There wasn't really a point, I just found it funny.

yohann305• 5 years ago

My brother did faint. Before he fainted I asked him are you ok? And he started replying incoherent words, that’s when I knew something was wrong. I was quick enough to go hold him as he was dropping towards the floor like a dead weight.

Also you have to understand I had no clue if the guy was fainting or dying on the spot

Ps: feel free to downvote cause this comment isn’t bringing any value, though it brings value to me as I’m venting off my heroic act..

chinathrow• 5 years ago

You did great catching him. Always try to catch someone falling.

A friend became briefly unconscious once and fell while another friend didn't react fast enough to hold him. The result of hitting asphalt hard was bleeding in the brain the size of a fist and 5 days in hospital care with hearing troubles for weeks.

Edit: spelling.

Symbiote• 5 years ago

From now on, your brother should tell the doctor/nurse this whenever receiving a vaccination or other injection. They will ask him to lie down, and wait 15 minutes (regardless of this new rule).

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

I always had problem with injections. First time i almost fainted, asked them to lie down and wait. Next time i asked them to do the injection lying down

BTW this is not a side effect of the specific vaccine, lots of people have fear of needles like that (Though i must say these vaccines feel like a sizeable chunk).

emerged• 5 years ago

I seem to have that issue with the dentist while they’re injecting into the gums or whatever. But shots in the arm don’t bother me at all.

Something about the inability to see whats going on, I just imagine the dentist panicking but trying not to let me know while the spit vacuum is draining my blood.

Havoc2• 5 years ago

Not quite convinced by the rationale given.

All that happened was people loitering & browsing on their phones a bit before buggering off. Removing that isn't going to tangibly speed up the roll-out of vaccines.

The only NHS staff present last time in that area was someone handing out "I've been vaccinated" stickers

Smaug123• 5 years ago

My second dose was in Guy's, and the waiting area was at full capacity. (I would have quite happily gone to sit immediately outside the tent, but that was forbidden.) My third dose was in a community hall, with about the same number of vaccinators but 2x the available seating area, and throughput appeared massive by comparison. I think they must indeed have been limiting throughput at Guy's to avoid saturating the waiting area.

bellyfullofbac• 5 years ago

Currently there's an input limit because of this "buffer" (how full the waiting room is allowed to be), when I got my first dose 6 months ago there was a long line outside of the vaccination center (not in the UK), and people showing up at 5:20 for a 5:30 appointment was told to wait (the first limitation was probably only having x bookable appointments per time slot). The healthcare workers were going as fast as they can though, so I guess that's the real bottleneck.

I guess without the waiting area they can add more vaccination booths, but geez, that sounds stressful for the workers, imagine having a person every ~2 minutes for extended periods of time.

Which makes me think I should move my booster appointment to the morning...

Havoc2• 5 years ago

imagine having a person every ~2 minutes for extended periods of time.

For my 1s dose I was at a walk in that had announced a lower age range than rest of London and the entire twittersphere showed up as a result.

The docs must have been at <15 seconds each. Basically conveyor belt of people barely breaking their stride while walking past. They were still going at 19h00. Wild.

Though to be fair lots of volunteers on both before & after dealing with the logistics so that docs just did the needle part.

Definitely not sustainable pace especially if you expecting to do the same next day, but was impressive display of possible throughput

tialaramex• 5 years ago

Where I went for my third, they'd taken over a small carpark and put up temporary canopies, so the "waiting area" is just a bunch of outside space, chairs, something to keep the rain off. People sit around on their phones, self-timing the wait. Throughput was their constraint, not capacity.

That setup was pretty low risk because it's naturally ventilated (even windy at times) and has lots of capacity because it's just a car park plus some canopies. But obviously in a city centre clinic it may be very hard to do this (my GP† is in the heart of the University where I work, set on the edge of a pleasant grassy leisure area with a stream, the car park is accessed from a service road behind) but I can imagine the city hospital couldn't do likewise, nor could GPs in other inner city areas of my own city.

† General Practitioner, ie the doctor who knows a little about almost everything that can go wrong with humans and works out in the community not at a hospital.

tokai• 5 years ago

If you don't need to be observed, it would make it possible to be vaccinated in other settings than a big vaccine center. Like at your private MD, a mobile vaccine service, or something else.

zmb_• 5 years ago

By Litte's Law, the arrival rate to the waiting room (l) is equal to the number of customers in the waiting room (L) divided by the amount of time a customer spends in the waiting room (W), ie., l = L/W. If the arrival rate to the post-injection waiting room is less than the throughput of the vaccination stations, then removing (or reducing) the waiting time after an injection is going to improve performance of the system.

IshKebab• 5 years ago

I'm not sure what your maths is trying to but when I've been for jabs there have been queues for the injection but the waiting room has always had plenty of space. The waiting room was never a bottleneck so removing it would make no difference. I'm not sure where they got the 23% figure from.

Ah I just reread it:

that under the conditions of a system working at full capacity (as is needed now) the 15-minute wait reduces throughput by 23%.

So they're saying if they add a load more vaccinators the waiting room may become a bottleneck. Fair enough.

drcongo• 5 years ago

I had my booster this morning at a dedicated vax centre, there were two lines outside, one for pre-booked and a huge one for walkups. The whole thing was very slick, and extremely well marshalled by the volunteers, but you could definitely see a throughput issue with the waiting area - the movement of the queues wasn't constrained at all by the number of jabs they could give, but by the very large post-jab waiting area capacity. From entry to jabbed took maybe 3 minutes, but they couldn't move the queues any faster because of the backlog in the waiting area.

rsynnott• 5 years ago

All that happened was people loitering & browsing on their phones a bit before buggering off. Removing that isn't going to tangibly speed up the roll-out of vaccines.

It's not generally a problem for mass vaccination centres, but it very much is for small GP practices and pharmacies.

comice• 5 years ago

Had my booster in the UK yesterday and thought that sitting in a room with a bunch of other people for 15 minutes was surely an infection risk itself!

They let us leave after 5 minutes anyway.

criddell• 5 years ago

Had my booster (Moderna) at a grocery store pharmacy in Texas and they never mentioned any need to wait. I was in and out in just a few minutes.

arcticbull9• 5 years ago

That sounds like a liability for said pharmacy. Got mine at the Kaiser yesterday and they had signs up all over the place.

beardyw• 5 years ago

Agreed. We waited the full 15 minutes on trust, but having driven there I would have preferred to sit in the car. If people are planning to drive it might be an idea to do that anyway - no delay to others, and avoiding getting into difficulty while driving?

guhcampos• 5 years ago

In Brazil we had a few tens of millions of people vaccinated with the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine, no 15 minute wait required. I haven't heard of any anaphylaxis case, which is anecdotal of course but I believe anti-vaxxers would have made a big deal out of it.

So all-in-all killing this 15 minute wait might not be very effective to quicken vaccination, but it should not be harmful at all either, so no biggie really.

zerocount• 5 years ago

No biggie unless you're the one adversely affected.

flawzz• 5 years ago

Hey guh, I’m from Brazil too.

I took both Pfizer shots already and I had to wait 15 minutes only after getting the second dose.

I really appreciate the hard work of our health professionals, but I think most people didn’t wait after the jab because we are not following the vaccination protocol as we should.

adnmcq999• 5 years ago

We don’t want the jab because of general distrust- which is, if not reasonable, at least understandable.

headmelted5• 5 years ago

It definitely will speed things along from personal experience, if only because the waiting area afterwards seemed to be the bottleneck slowing things down.

Anecdotal I know, but it really was a case of waiting around for people to leave before they could continue.

marcosdumay• 5 years ago

I haven't heard of any anaphylaxis case, which is anecdotal of course but I believe anti-vaxxers would have made a big deal out of it.

People just don't talk about them. They happen, with a much lower (by orders of magnitude) rate than the ones caused by the disease, and AFAIK not distinguishable from the random average without a vaccine (what is very surprising, so I probably have bad data).

Anti-vaxxers do make a big deal about them. But people are very good on ignoring the fact that everybody has a small chance of just dropping dead at any time by random, so most people just don't listen.

addicted• 5 years ago

Looks like another victim of partygate.

Boris Johnson’s need to distract from his scandals led him to announce targets without discussing with the NHS and actual providers so now they need to make changes to accommodate his political requirements.

mercy_dude2• 5 years ago

Not a fan of Borris Johnson but I will give credit where it’s due. UK government has done far better job than in delivering boosters and vaccines. No need to have derangement syndrome, I think more people we can get boosters the better off we are. His scandals and affairs are different issues.

chiefalchemist• 5 years ago

Once a politician, always a politician. The good politicians stay on the front foot (as they say in English football). The bad ones are always on their heals.

You might believe these arw different issue. But if Boris is an on the front foot politician, rest assure he thinks (and acts) otherwise.

cjrp• 5 years ago

UK government has done far better job than in delivering boosters and vaccines.

Specifically the civil service and NHS

arcticbull9• 5 years ago

Bojo wasn't out there vaccinating people himself. That's the NHS that's been hauling ass. It's kind of their raison d'être.

The political arm of the UK government's job ends at procurement.

me_me_me• 5 years ago

Are you forgetting his stunts and commentary to downplay the vacinations/covid resulting in people not taking it seriously, low vaccinations and no lockdowns?

They had highest deaths in EU as they failed to learn from Italy, who at the time was just recovering from first wave there.

This is akin seeing someone drive fast loose control and smash into a tree, followed by 'hold my beer, i can go faster'

mdp2021• 5 years ago

Not a fan ... but I will give credit where it’s due

If you want to give credit, there are a number of actors, a number of facilitators, and a number of mostly spectators. You cannot immediately entail who did what, who is responsible, without knowing how the mechanism works (sometimes, without having information from the inside).

Some careers are based on taking credit irregardless; some other surely must be linked to real merit... Do not jump from "John was in charge" to "John did it" (to define the actual role and impact of John means considering a complex system).

About the specific context, I think there exist articles praising a number of key actors.

verytrivial2• 5 years ago

There was a period towards the start of the vaccination programme where, yes, the UK Government took a number of chances that seemed to pay off regarding vaccine approval and purchasing. However is the Hurclean efforts of thousands of NHS staff and volunteers which should be the subject of most praise. It was and is an amazing an effort from a vast group of people who weren't in the VIP lane.

The UK has fallen well down the ranks regarding 1st, 2nd, and booster delivery compared to Europe.

As for the endless announcements of changes to government policy to the press before Parliament ... this Government has been on the receiving end of the sort of dressing down from the House Speaker that would have resulted resignations and party explutions in the past.

But it has had the desired effect of making people think the Government is doing well, so I'll give him that.

KaiserPro5• 5 years ago

There is one decision that made the vaccine programme possible, which is buying all of the vaccines early at a high(er) price. This was sensible and good. It took a lot of headbanging to get that through, I am grateful to whomever did it.

In terms of getting it into peoples arms, we've not been doing that well till the booster. Yes there was an early lead, but france now has more vaccinated people per capita than us, and they had a horrid start.

benbojangles• 5 years ago

Anything but Labour.

JulianMorrison3• 5 years ago

2 things can be simultaneously true: Boris Johnson is a liar who is so completely untrustworthy that I'd check his assertion if he said the sky was blue, and in this particular case getting people boosted is a good idea.

In fact the thing he's doing to accommodate his political requirement here is softball the regulations in the hope that a panicky rush to give boosters will damp down a two-day doubling time. It won't, and he'll have to lock down yet again, far too late.

heisenbit• 5 years ago

The reasoning sounds scary i.e. Omicron doubling every 2-3days…

lolc• 5 years ago

It's doubling at the expense of the delta variant. Total cases are not doubling.

an9n• 5 years ago

We should not trust in any way any UK government statistics any longer - it's crystal clear they are lying through their teeth.

323• 5 years ago

There is no reason to think the doubling will immediately stop once delta is pushed out.

pfdietz• 5 years ago

When Omicron reaches the majority of new cases the growth rate of the total number of new cases will accelerate. Until then, the doubling is masked by the large Delta background.

VLM3• 5 years ago

Comparing the USA rates of hospitalization by age group as reported by statista to the anaphylaxis rates in the link, the "best" vax outcomes are with very old and comorbidity people, so it would have been wiser to separate by age.

Or maybe rephrased the outcome for vax'd 85+ and generally speaking, old fat and sick, patients is so vastly better that anaphylaxis among that group would be a rounding error, being vax'd for those people is like 800+ times better than unvax'd. On the other hand, for thin healthy kids the hospitalization rate for covid for a couple months is about the same as the anaphylaxis rate in that age group, so vax'ing healthy young people won't reduce hospitalization rates overall, instead of having like 1 per 100K kids in the hospital for covid you'd have about 1 per 100K kids in the hospital for anaphylaxis, so for them the risk is vastly reduced from no improvement to some improvement if they watch them for 15 minutes.

Therefore the best policy would be some sort of age based triage. Not-old, thin, healthy are more likely to end up with anaphylaxis hospitalization than covid hospitalization, so put them in observation for 15 mins to minimize the damage from vaccination. As for the old, fat, and sick, the rate of anaphylaxis hospitalization can seems to be about one thousandth the rate of covid hospitalization so proportionately observing them for 15 minutes won't save as many as simply vax'ing more of them would save, so push them thru the assembly line and don't bother with the 15 minutes.

I don't know the ratio of old/fat/sick to healthy in the UK. Perhaps, similar to some areas of the USA, may as well simply make one policy assuming everyone is old/fat/sick or some combination. In that situation the UK plan might make sense. Like in the USA having a vax clinic at a nursing home or Walmart or similar, just assume everyone attending the vax clinic is old/fat/sick.

arcticbull9• 5 years ago

On the other hand, for thin healthy kids the hospitalization rate for covid for a couple months is about the same as the anaphylaxis rate in that age group, so vax'ing healthy young people won't reduce hospitalization rates overall.

I don't think this follows. Part of the benefit of vaccination is that it prevents spread and so vaccinating young and healthy people helps insulate unwell, old and immunocompromised folks.

Not-old, thin, healthy are more likely to end up with anaphylaxis hospitalization than covid hospitalization, so put them in observation for 15 mins to minimize the damage from vaccination.

The goal here is to speed up the rate of vaccination by eliminating the bottleneck of keeping folks around. Only 28% of folks in the UK are obese so, and taking into account other factors and comoribidities, let's say 50% of folks needed to wait and 50% were free to go.

Operationalizing a giant waiting line for thin people to hang out in as they wait on folks with a 15 minute timer, while fat people with comorbidies were free to duck in and out and get back to their lives feels pretty unworkable.

Jtype• 5 years ago

As someone in a population that is 99%+ vaccinated and covid is spreading like wildfire, the vaccines are doing nothing to stop spread now. We are seeing the most dramatic rise in cases since Covid began. This is in a youthful population who are almost all vaccinated. We have so far avoided severe illness, so I would recommend the vaccines to any individuals, but I see nothing now to convince me that vaccinating children will stop or even reduce spread.

arcbyte2• 5 years ago

I don't think this follows. Part of the benefit of vaccination is that it prevents spread and so vaccinating young and healthy people helps insulate unwell, old and immunocompromised folks.

Vaccinating young and healthy people will reduce the R value and that will result in some number of unwell, elderly, and immunocompromised people avoiding infection or taking longer to get infected. That's true.

However, the data on vaccinating kids seems to point to an increase in health problems for them - not of COVID but of myocarditis. So parents deciding whether to vaccinate their children need to consider the circumstances of their individual child.

disambiguation3• 5 years ago

Part of the benefit of vaccination is that it prevents spread and so vaccinating young and healthy people helps insulate unwell, old and immunocompromised folks.

Does the evidence really support this though?

Kids are generally not hanging out around older people or groups of at risk individuals. Most infections (~99%) that result in mortality happen in hospitals, long term care facilities, and prisons.

Further, this doesn't align with my understanding of how the vaccine "slows the spread".

Spreading covid is like a game of catch. Someone has to throw the ball, and someone else has to catch it.

For ex. we know masks are a mechanism that reduces your ability to "throw the ball".

And we know the vaccine reduces your ability to "catch the ball", but once you've caught it you will spread the disease just like anyone else.

Therefore, slowing the spread means that everyone gets exposed to covid a little bit at a time, not all at once. Good for managing hospital capacity. But everyone gets exposed nonetheless.

So as far as targeting demographics goes, I'm not aware of any evidence that increased vaccination among young people corresponds to a reduced likelihood of the elderly getting exposed to the disease, though I'd love to see said evidence to the contrary.

sys_64738• 5 years ago

After the Moderna booster I walked right out although they required a waiting period where I am.

snarf21• 5 years ago

Globally, we have done a poor job preparing people for the shots. I only had symptoms after my first jab but I immediately ate lunch and started hydrating heavily. Nothing at all for my last two, maybe some very mild fatigue and injection site soreness. I talked to the RN who gave me my booster and her anecdote after doing this for months was that the only people who get woozy are those who hadn't eaten or drank that day yet.

Everyone should be told to eat 30 minutes before your shot and to hydrate excessively before and after your shot. Treat it like a cold and feed it. Your body will have an immune response after the shot, give it the fluids and immediate blood sugar to do so and get on with your day.

headmelted5• 5 years ago

This is what panic looks like.

Given the virus is by most recent evidence assumed to be airborne (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sage-98-minutes-c...) it wouldn’t take much at this stage to cause the system to flood with cases.

If you’ve been vaccinated are you going to be fine? Probably.

If you haven’t? Shrug. We’ll find out in the next couple of weeks I guess.

The government knows that they now need another round of lockdowns but don’t have enough support among the public to do it, hence the desperate push for this as the next best thing.

The queues to get jabs in my neck of the woods have been massive, so maybe that’s a good sign. Not that it was fun standing in a big queue with that many strangers for hours.

I’d prefer to have an actual Omicron vaccine but hopefully winging it with this one works.

JulianMorrison3• 5 years ago

2 jabs is iffy, 2 + booster seems like "probably fine". Hence the panic.

KaiserPro5• 5 years ago

2 jabs is fine, its just you're about 20% more likely to get symptoms (assuming you are 18-50 and of good health). The issue is you're still going to have a week of feeling like shite. but you're much less likley to need hospital care

3 jabs gives you an 80-95% chance of not exhibiting symptoms. This is what most people expect of a vaccine. (frankly its what I had hoped that two jabs would provide. But I am naive )

checker659• 5 years ago

2 jabs should be fine too. Especially if you had a huge gap between the two doses.

bArray2• 5 years ago

This is what panic looks like.

Imagine the Facebook posts when people start dropping after a vaccine shot, because the government suspended the wait times. They need vaccinations to look as safe as possible - this will not end well.

[..] it wouldn’t take much at this stage to cause the system to flood with cases.

I'm not entirely sure Omicron is a bad thing. It's over-mutated to the point where it's not nearly as deadly as Delta and out-competes Delta. The virology researchers even predicted that Delta was essentially as bad as it was going to get (hence the effort for a Delta specific booster).

The government knows that they now need another round of lockdowns but don’t have enough support among the public to do it, hence the desperate push for this as the next best thing.

Not much of a surprise when you're out partying whilst the laws you helped pass are convicting others.

The queues to get jabs in my neck of the woods have been massive, so maybe that’s a good sign.

As long as the majority of people who intend to get one can get one, I think that's a success. I don't want to see the stick being used in the UK, only the carrot.

I’d prefer to have an actual Omicron vaccine but hopefully winging it with this one works.

Speaking to people on the inside, they were still desperately trying to get a delta specific version out the door in time for boosters - and the Delta variant has been around for quite a while. Don't hold your breath at all on Omicron. Unless there is magically some low hanging fruit (all signs say there is not), then at best you're talking about something for mid next year.

DanBC• 5 years ago

I'm not entirely sure Omicron is a bad thing. It's over-mutated to the point where it's not nearly as deadly as Delta

This is untrue, and is based on misinterpretations of the South Africa data. There are lots of reasons why it looks less lethal in SA, but omicron in other countries is looking about as lethal as delta, with increased transmission. Vaccination and boosters look to be protective against serious harm. In England the vast majority of people in ICUs at the moment are unvaccinated.

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1471169712851673097?s...

"Prof Chris Whitty suggests idea that South African data shows omicron is milder is wrong.

"There's a danger that people have over-interpreted this, think it's not going to be a problem... I want to be clear, this is going to be a problem.""

There's also no evidence that Omicron is replacing Delta.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/covid-two-epidemics-omicro...

Early indications that the Omicron variant may be less mild will not stop a dangerous wave which could risk overwhelming hospitals, the chief medical officer has warned.
Britain is now experiencing two separate Covid-19 epidemics with rates of the Delta variant high but stable while Omicron grows rapidly, according to Chris Whitty.

antirez4• 5 years ago

In Italy the 15 wait is done in an additional room where people are just "asked" to stay at the end of the process. Then they can go away before the wait, if the want. I can't see how a wait at the end of the process could reduce throughput by 23%. This looks like the next UK mismanagement of the pandemic.

goodcanadian2• 5 years ago

In the UK, and my experience was similar. I did my 15 minute wait sitting in my car, and it was only recommended because I was driving. When my wife did hers, I drove her, so we didn't bother waiting around (and no one asked us to). I really don't know where this is coming from.

anon1385• 5 years ago

I think experience will differ a lot based on when you were vaccinated. Earlier on (Feb/March last year) it sounds like the waiting time wasn't being strictly enforced - you were advised to wait especially if you were driving but there wasn't really any administration of it. That was the experience my parents had and I heard similar from other people vaccinated at that time.

I got vaccinated in the summer at one of the larger vaccination centres and they were being more strict about it. After getting vaccinated they gave you a card with a time written on it which was when you were supposed to leave (although both times it was only 10 mins not 15). There was a dedicated 'room' with chairs in it and a clock and a nurse watching over things. After your time was up you left the card on the chair. Nobody was physically forcing you to stay but there was an obvious expectation that you would and I didn't see anybody walk straight out either time (out of a sample of 60+ people that I overlapped with).

barnabee2• 5 years ago

If the additional room has N seats you can vaccinate at most N people per 15 minutes. Many vaccination venues are small and the size of these rooms could easily be the limiting factor compared to the throughput potentially achievable by a couple of staff giving the actual injections.

When I had mine there were maybe 8 seats, which were full, and they were calling the next patient as seats became free.

johnchristopher• 5 years ago

In Belgium, the first jab in June I was waiting in a tent in tent with others, tent was mostly opened. Second jab in July I was waiting in a closed store space, sitting on a chair, within 1.5 meters of each other.

I will most likely get the third jab in mid-january according to schedule so I am pretty sure I'll be standing outside for a bit (if I can) this time :).

giarc• 5 years ago

Likely for two reasons. When planning vaccine clinics, you have to assume everyone will wait their 15 minutes and plan that into how many appointments you can book. If you only have a waiting room that can properly seat X amount of people for 15 minutes, then you can only book Y amount of appointments. (remember it's not fire capacity anymore since they should be 2 meters apart).

The other thing this allows is drive thru appointments in different areas. Drive thru vaccine clinics have existed before, but it's very difficult to find a place large enough to house a whole bunch of cars for 15 minutes. The same argument as above applies.

This also opens up things like vaccine clinics at train stations where you get the jab waiting for the train, then once your are done you can immediately jump on your train/bus etc.

antirez4• 5 years ago

In in Italy I received 3 shots in total, in three different vaccination units. We have among the highest vaccination rates in Europe so at some points a lot of people showed up. Well... the waiting room never where the problem because you need a room only as large as the peak vaccination rate you can have within 15 minutes. Now: because of anamnesis, check of the documents, and other stuff, it is very hard to vaccine a lot of people in 15 minutes: this means that you need a relatively small room. This is what makes me very skeptical about the NHS analysis.

EDIT: I just asked a friend of mine working at one of such vaccination areas and confirmed my impressions. They never had a problem with the waiting room, but instead a problem with the queue that forms at the initial stage, because the vaccination itself does not go very fast, due to the checks needed to make sure you can receive the shot, is the correct one, and so forth.

_Wintermute3• 5 years ago

In Italy the 15 wait is done in an additional room where people are just "asked" to stay at the end of the process.

Same as the UK until this change.

I can't see how a wait at the end of the process could reduce throughput by 23%.

Because there are vaccination centres where the capacity of the waiting room at the end is the limiting factor.

This looks like the next UK mismanagement of the pandemic.

There we are, the rest of your argument was just pretext for some racism.

antirez4• 5 years ago

Well, given I share the same "race" of most UK people (I'm a while Italian), I guess it's not racism. Just the UK government didn't handle it very well in my opinion. For instance now they want a new lockdown after months where everything was possible without any care. And this is just the last data point. Removing the wait is another instance of a not very focused mindset in dealing with the pandemic. That the final stage of waiting slows down you 23% is very unlikely under a bit less rigid parameters. You can say: sit if there are sits, otherwise if you can wait staying on your feet, and as 3rd option wait in your car in the vicinity. To remove the wait looks like nonsense: an illusion of pragmatism. Now, since many other things the UK government did looked like nonsense, including the first idea of going for herd immunity, you have to admit that another nonsense is not completely improbable.

lamontcg2• 5 years ago

There we are, the rest of your argument was just pretext for some racism.

It isn't racist to criticize the actions of governments.

Arubis• 5 years ago

How on earth does this speed vaccination rates? The 15-minute wait is after the jab, and so presents zero bandwidth constraints on the actual vaccination process. It’s just a bunch of people sitting quietly in a room requiring almost no attention, then leaving.

I don’t have a huge objection to the decision itself; if folks have found that GBS is really low risk, sure, tell people they can stay or go at their leisure. But the justification here is so transparently ridiculous that it makes me wonder what the real reason is.

barnabee2• 5 years ago

Addressed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29565981

Vaccination is much quicker than 15 minutes... if there isn't space in the room for the next person to sit quietly, you can't jab them.

ceejayoz2• 5 years ago

Rooms have capacity limits, especially with distancing requirements.

You can do probably fifteen shots in that fifteen minutes, so if you've got a big queue it certainly might let you get through it faster.

wonderwonder• 5 years ago

Got the booster the other day and no 15 minute wait time. This is in the US. I did ask them to aspirate the shot before pushing it and they seemed surprised but did it without issue and were very nice about it. Have read a few articles questioning whether accidental intravenous injections are causing myopericarditis. Figured having them aspirate would just be a good thing.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34406358/

toyg3• 5 years ago

It should be said that the minister clarified on the radio this morning that this is an optional measure for facilities where accounting for the 15min wait would slow down operations upstream. If there is no such restriction (because, say, the carpark is big or the waiting hall is large, etc), then they can keep people waiting.

I had my third shot in a parish centre, and the post-jab waiting room was a church hall. It was largely empty, there was plenty of space, I don't think they were even monitoring the numbers coming in; I wouldn't expect the likes of them to remove the wait.

Anthony-G• 5 years ago

To avoid a recurrence of last year where there was a massive spike of hospitalisations (due to Delta), the Irish health service is keen to get as many people their booster shot before Christmas. It looks like we’ll be doing the same in Ireland: https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1215/1266843-covid-...

Last winter, the number of cases started growing from November onwards – even before newer variants such as Delta became a concern – but the government was under huge public and media pressure not to introduce further restrictions to control the spread. They went against the recommendations of the National Public Health Emergency Team (as they’re entitled to do so) and allowed Christmas and pre-Christmas to proceed without restrictions. Predictably, the case numbers grew exponentially and they had to bring in another lock-down a couple of days after Christmas. Unfortunately, it was too late and in the New Year, case numbers surged far higher and quicker than they had in 2020, ICU beds filled to capacity and it took many months of restrictions to restore Covid-19 incidence to a manageable level.

Almost everyone is hoping that the current set of approved vaccines will work effectively enough against Omicron that we’ll avoid a repeat of last year. While I haven’t (yet) “done my own research”, our National Immunisation Advisory Committee is fairly conservative so I’m not overly concerned if they recommend removing the 15-minute observation period to increase throughput and allow more citizens to get a booster shot sooner. As software developers might say, “the perfect is the enemy of the good”.

Suspension of the 15-minute wait for vaccination with mRNA vaccine for Covid-19

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