Page 7 - Royal Statistical News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Getting a coronavirus vaccine is safer than driving or cycling to work, a Government scientific adviser has said. Professor Stephen Reicher said having a Covid-19 jab is “actually one of the safer things you do in the day”. Figures suggest the risk of developing a rare blood clot is about four people in a million who receive the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has said, prompting a change in course to offer under 30s in the UK an alternative jab. Prof Reicher, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, said ...

All viruses change through random mutations. Through genomic sequencing we now know that the UK epidemic was seeded by more than 1,000 distinct variants from people returning from Italy, Spain and France in February and March 2020, explaining why we got off to such a bad start. These tiny changes are mostly inconsequential. Sometimes the virus gets lucky and spreads more easily, or causes more severe illness, in which case it earns the label...

Trailblazing women in statistics Lynne Billard Women have been leaders in the field of statistics for decades, with contributions ranging from theoretical developments to applications in biology, climatology and medicine. A recent paper by University of Georgia statistics professor Lynne Billard, “Women Trailblazers in the Statistical Profession,” provides a historical introduction to these remarkable scholars from around the globe. Billard met or knew several of these extraordinary women. Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale Born in Italy in 1820, Nightingale began her career as a n...

Behind the numbers: the policy of giving as many first jabs as possible is already cutting hospital admission rates

Is 12 weeks between Covid jabs too long? David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters © Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Observer The UK has a controversial policy of giving second doses of coronavirus vaccine 12 weeks after the first dose, rather than the three-week gap used in other countries. What is the reasoning behind what the First, since there are limited doses of vaccine, this strategy means protecting more people, faster. This is an optimisation problem against supply constraints, time and a deadly virus. Modelling showed that, provided the first...