Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

stephenjmcd

Van.Bosch wrote: »

Website seems to be still working. What system do they use for tracking cases I wonder?

Website should be fine, assuming it's hosted externally and won't hold any data.

Issue looks to be on its records systems more than anywhere else.

OwlsZat

stephenjmcd wrote: »

Literally just got a text from someone involved with the HSE via one of their contractors.

It's a bad one, defence forces cyber security are involved & talk of GCHQ giving assistance

Vaccine rollout not impacted

It's fairly common knowledge that we don't have a centralized hospital IT system like the NSH does or Australia, USA etc., does., St. James is the only hospital where records are digitalized. Hence all the young doctors want to work there.

In other hospitals we pay intern and junior doctors wages to manage vast paper files; writing letters of all sorts, and sieve through paper records looking for key words or requesting files from other hospitals for senior staff.

It's one of the biggest inefficiencies and wastes in the country. Ironically, it might help us here but it's still a shambles. Obviously, we should have a robust properly managed centralized IT system.

bodun

OwlsZat wrote: »

It's fairly common knowledge that we don't have a centralized hospital IT system like the NSH does or Australia, USA etc., does., St. James is the only hospital where records are digitalized. Hence all the young doctors want to work there.

In other hospitals we pay intern and junior doctors wages to manage vast paper files; writing letters of all sorts, and sieve through paper records looking for key words or requesting files from other hospitals for senior staff.

It's one of the biggest inefficiencies and wastes in the country. Ironically, it might help us here but it's still a shambles. Obviously, we should have a robust properly managed centralized IT system.

Nonsense, NCHD's don't want to work in specific hospitals because of their IT systems, they want to work in the best teaching hospitals where they will work with the best superiors and see a wide variety of cases.


NCHDS don't manage paper files of write letters either, there are admin people to do that for them.

revelman

revelman wrote: »

Hang on. I usually agree with your posts. But there are different graphs depending on how much virus is circulating in the community. You are pointing to the scenario where there is very low exposure of risk. Compared to the U.K., we still have quite a bit of virus in the community and, with less than 40% of people with a first vaccine, this could easily spread even more with any further loosening of restrictions. If there is a medium risk of exposure to the virus, the potential benefits of AZ vaccine outweigh potential harms for all age groups. If there is a high or very high risk, then the benefits far outweigh the harms.

Yes the risk changes depending on the level of virus spreading, but if you look at the rates each scenario is based on, we are still closest to the lowest one (which is based on 0.6 cases per day per 10,000 - we are at 0.9 per 10,000).

stephenjmcd

OwlsZat wrote: »

It's fairly common knowledge that we don't have a centralized hospital IT system like the NSH does or Australia, USA etc., does., St. James is the only hospital where records are digitalized. Hence all the young doctors want to work there.

In other hospitals we pay intern and junior doctors wages to manage vast paper files; writing letters of all sorts, and sieve through paper records looking for key words or requesting files from other hospitals for senior staff.

It's one of the biggest inefficiencies and wastes in the country. Ironically, it might help us here but it's still a shambles. Obviously, we should have a robust properly managed centralized IT system.

I don't want to derail the thread as it's to do with vaccine rollout but that's not true at all.

But I'll leave it there as I'm not going to bring the thread off topic.

Valhallapt

stephenjmcd wrote: »

I don't want to derail the thread as it's to do with vaccine rollout but that's not true at all.

But I'll leave it there as I'm not going to bring the thread off topic.

It’s not the main driving force, but I’ve heard it listed as a positive several times.

Russman

Sooo, when are we thinking the portal will open for the 40s ? Monday/Tuesday ?

As an aside, despite all the differing views on what NIAC should or shouldn't do, you do have to wonder what exactly they've been considering for the last week or more.

stephenjmcd

Russman wrote: »

Sooo, when are we thinking the portal will open for the 40s ? Monday/Tuesday ?

As an aside, despite all the differing views on what NIAC should or shouldn't do, you do have to wonder what exactly they've been considering for the last week or more.

Don't think it'll be that quick to be honest. Maybe towards the end of next week.

There's still alot of 50s to & some 60s in certain centres do before thinking about 40s. Mother is 58 and registered on the day so hopefully should hear in the next day or two with an appointment.

I wouldn't expect 40s to be invited to register though before the next of next week

OwlsZat

stephenjmcd wrote: »

I don't want to derail the thread as it's to do with vaccine rollout but that's not true at all.

But I'll leave it there as I'm not going to bring the thread off topic.

Why don't you enlighten me. If it's top secret information do share in PM. Love to enlighten the doctor I live with.

josip

Russman wrote: »

Sooo, when are we thinking the portal will open for the 40s ? Monday/Tuesday ?

As an aside, despite all the differing views on what NIAC should or shouldn't do, you do have to wonder what exactly they've been considering for the last week or more.

The portal won't open for the 40s until NIAC decide if they are going to change the age recommendation for J&J and AZ.

is_that_so

josip wrote: »

The portal won't open for the 40s until NIAC decide if they are going to change the age recommendation for J&J and AZ.

I'd wonder whether they might pause for a bit longer than that till they clear out Group 7.

revelman

josip wrote: »

The portal won't open for the 40s until NIAC decide if they are going to change the age recommendation for J&J and AZ.

Varadkar said in the Dail yesterday that we should hear from NIAC within days but “certainly before Tuesday”. The way he singled out Tuesday suggests to me that they were planning to open registration from Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Scuid Mhór

is_that_so wrote: »

I'd wonder whether they might pause for a bit longer than that till they clear out Group 7.

This to me is the optimal route for them to take.

pc7

Russman wrote: »

Sooo, when are we thinking the portal will open for the 40s ? Monday/Tuesday ?

.

This attack will really delay things if HSE aren't back up and running soon, GPs cant refer to labs, tests etc. Portal will be least of their issues.

Scuid Mhór

pc7 wrote: »

This attack will really delay things if HSE aren't back up and running soon, GPs cant refer to labs, tests etc. Portal will be least of their issues.

Not necessarily. The vaccine related cloud software isn’t effected by the ransomware attack. There’s no reason for it not to continue as normal.

Russman

revelman wrote: »

Varadkar said in the Dail yesterday that we should hear from NIAC within days but “certainly before Tuesday”. The way he singled out Tuesday suggests to me that they were planning to open registration from Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Yeah, that's what I was sort of thinking too

josip

is_that_so wrote: »

I'd wonder whether they might pause for a bit longer than that till they clear out Group 7.

Other posters on here earlier made the good point, that if they do decide to lower J&J and AZ for the 40s that they face a similar problem of pausing many of those 40s until the end of June in order to use the J&J when the bulk of the supply will arrive. Uncertainty of supply is the big risk with this.

For 40s, the delay will be a couple of weeks less than would have been for the 50s, and the risk of contracting will be lower, but the principle and the dilemma remains the same.

It's an easier sell if it's only the J&J that the 40s are on hold for, since they will end up fully vaccinated at the same time as Pfizer/Moderna 2 dosers.
But if 40 something year olds have to wait until June for an AZ dose, that's a much harder sell politically.

And this is no longer a medical decision, just look at the hospital case numbers.
This is now a political decision and if they can get the country opened back up safely in time for the summer, without copping any political flak (eg blood clots) for their chosen course.

MerlinSouthDub

I see that https://vaccine.hse.ie/ is down

"This service is not available right now. Please try again later."

josip

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

I see that https://vaccine.hse.ie/ is down

"This service is not available right now. Please try again later."

When something like this happens, you'd switch off everything, even if it was no/low risk.
You'd then identify which systems can be restarted, having done some analysis and checking.
The HSE systems will come back up incrementally over the next few weeks I'd imagine.
Cloud-based systems, whose security would be handled by a cloud provider and should be absolutely bullet proof, will probably come back later today.

Pandiculation

That could simply be a precaution to ensure those systems are safe.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of world we’re living in. That attack isn’t likely to be random. It’s probably a demand for money because they know it’s life threatening and think that we’ll pay up.

You can be sure they know they’ve hijacked a healthcare system.

Hurrache

OwlsZat wrote: »

s., St. James is the only hospital where records are digitalized.

"Common knowledge" is often incorrect knowledge, such as in this post.

zebastein

To sum up this issue of IT and vaccination:
- All maternity hospitals have digital records and the IT is hosted by the HSE on their local servers. This is where the attack is and what is impacted at the moment.

- the vaccination platform is a completely different. It a Salesforce product hosted in the cloud so it has nothing to do with it. There might be cross points and smaller services that are hosted by the HSE but that should be minimal

Lucas Hood

Pandiculation wrote: »

That could simply be a precaution to ensure those systems are safe.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of world we’re living in. That attack isn’t likely to be random. It’s probably a demand for money because they know it’s life threatening and think that we’ll pay up.

You can be sure they know they’ve hijacked a healthcare system.

If you pay up once , they or others will just come back and do it again.

snotboogie

josip wrote: »

Other posters on here earlier made the good point, that if they do decide to lower J&J and AZ for the 40s that they face a similar problem of pausing many of those 40s until the end of June in order to use the J&J when the bulk of the supply will arrive. Uncertainty of supply is the big risk with this.

For 40s, the delay will be a couple of weeks less than would have been for the 50s, and the risk of contracting will be lower, but the principle and the dilemma remains the same.

It's an easier sell if it's only the J&J that the 40s are on hold for, since they will end up fully vaccinated at the same time as Pfizer/Moderna 2 dosers.
But if 40 something year olds have to wait until June for an AZ dose, that's a much harder sell politically.

And this is no longer a medical decision, just look at the hospital case numbers.
This is now a political decision and if they can get the country opened back up safely in time for the summer, without copping any political flak (eg blood clots) for their chosen course.

As I said a few weeks ago with the 50's you can be sure that the government will take the easy way out and kick the hard decisions down the road. It'll be the same with the 40's. Theyll get whatever vaccine is available and the government will then hope the age can be lowered for AZ and J&J for the 30's.

Van.Bosch

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

I see that https://vaccine.hse.ie/ is down

"This service is not available right now. Please try again later."

I’m an optimist - maybe they are making changes to open it up to 40-49 year olds!

I doubt it - I’m sure it’s precautionary.

Doubt we’ll be getting daily vaccine numbers this morning either.

Managing this with a lot of people WFH makes it harder too.

zebastein

Lucas Hood wrote: »

If you pay up once , they or others will just come back and do it again.

This is not what happens in real life.
There are 56% victims of ransomware that pay the ransom. A ransomware like Ryuk made 150 billion dollars. They attack some it systems and hospitals every month. It is in their interest to be trusted, so once you pay, you get something back. Otherwise nobody would pay.

And usually the it systems don't come back online until they improved their security. So basically it is easier to attack anyone else than a system that was already attacked once and that fixed the holes in their system

Vaccinated30

Van.Bosch wrote: »

I’m an optimist - maybe they are making changes to open it up to 40-49 year olds!

I doubt it - I’m sure it’s precautionary.

Doubt we’ll be getting daily vaccine numbers this morning either.

Managing this with a lot of people WFH makes it harder too.

It's because of the cyber attack I assume

eoinbn

Ecdc updated. Recent deliveries.

Pfizer 182k
AZ 33k
J&J 18k

iguana

josip wrote: »

It's an easier sell if it's only the J&J that the 40s are on hold for, since they will end up fully vaccinated at the same time as Pfizer/Moderna 2 dosers.

What happens then to the people in our 40s who are higher risk of CVST? I've had a look through the conditions that make you higher risk for CVST and I have a history of a couple of them, including several episodes of severe Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension where I've been rushed to hospital by ambulance. I'm very strongly pro-vaccine but I suspect that my risk from an ad-virus vector vaccine may be higher than my risk from Covid, especially as I most likely have some sort of immunity from prior infection. At this point, I'm feeling that if NIAC allow women over 40 to get those vaccines that I'm going to have to contact my doctor to see if I can qualify to be exempted from AZ and J&J. Because as far as I can remember from registering my mother, the portal only asks about clotting disorders. I really hate to be one of those people demanding a 'better' vaccine but I'm quite worried about this now considering my medical history.

OwlsZat

Hurrache wrote: »

"Common knowledge" is often incorrect knowledge, such as in this post.

Thanks for taking the time to share such an insightful post.