Targeting the vaccine...

 

Just over half of Britain's c4000 patients in ICU as a result of covid-19 are aged between 50 and 69. 

Yet the first phase of the vaccine programme has targeted the oldest age-group, the 80+s, as these are the likeliest to die from the disease. 

Robert Peston suggested on Coffee House recently that this has been an essentially political decision as Boris, in spite of all the rhetoric about protecting the NHS, is most concerned about the top line stat of covid-related deaths. 

Here in Guatemala the calculus may eventually be slightly different. It would seem that people are dying younger (in part because they generally don't live so long) and, although I have no up-to-date stats on this, I suspect that hospitalisation is less effective here as a way of staving off pandemic mortality. 

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock spoke this morning of 'relentless' pressure on the NHS and one can only suspect that public healthcare here, even with proportionally fewer infections, is already under severe strain.

And so we shall have to see where the Guatemalan government chooses to direct the first limited batch of vaccines that they have ordered.