It sounds like there’s been a licensing change allowing provision of the vaccine outside the NHS as of March 2024 (ish). Pharmadoctor is a company that supplies pharmacies and has been putting about the word that they’ll soon be able to supply them with vaccine doses for private sale—most media coverage I found names them specifically. However, the pharmacies themselves are responsible for setting the price and managing bookings or whatever. All Pharmadoctor does for the end user is tell you which pharmacies they are supplying and give you the following pricing guidance:
Nuvaxovid XBB.1.5 (Novavax) £45-£55 (update: estimated availability from w/c 22/04/2024)
Some places offering bookings:
Rose Pharmacy (Deptford, London) replied to my e-mail on 21st March saying they would offer Pfizer for £80 and later in April said Novavax for £50.
JP Pharmacy (Camden High St, London) offers Pfizer for £85
Fleet Street Clinic (London), £95 “initial price” for the updated Pfizer vaccine.
Doctorcall (at-home service), which vaccine not specified, £90 “in addition to the cost of the visit” which seem to be from £195.
I’ve found that most pharmacies on Pharmadoctor’s FInd a Pharmacy button have little or no web presence and often don’t explicitly own up to offering private COVID jabs. I’ve e-mailed a couple to see what they say. Here’s a list of pharmacies I’ve tried but not heard from, mostly for my own records:
Today I got a dose of Novavax for free, largely by luck that’s probably not reproducible.
It turns out that vials of Novavax contain 5 doses and only last a short time, I think for 24 hours. Pharmacies therefore need to batch bookings together, and I guess someone got tired of waiting and opted to just buy the entire vial for themselves, letting whoever pick up the other doses. I then found about this via Rochelle Harris, who in turn found out about it via a Facebook group (UK Novavax Vaccine info) for coordinating these things.
I’ve been linked to The benefits of Novavax explained which is optimistic about the strengths of Novavax, suggesting it has the potential to offer longer-term protection, and protection against variants as well.
I think the things the article says or implies about pushback from mRNA vaccine supporters seem unlikely to me—my guess is that in aggregate Wall Street benefits much more from eliminating COVID than it does from selling COVID treatments, though individual pharma companies might feel differently—but they seem like the sort of unlikely thing that someone who had reasonable beliefs about the science but spent too much time arguing on Twitter might end up believing. Regardless, I’m left unsure how to feel about its overall reliability, and would welcome thoughts one way or the other.
Gathering some notes on private COVID vaccine availability in the UK.
News coverage:
The Pharmacist—Pharmacies can offer private Pfizer Covid jabs from March
Guardian—Pharmacies in England and Scotland to offer private Covid jabs – for £45
It sounds like there’s been a licensing change allowing provision of the vaccine outside the NHS as of March 2024 (ish). Pharmadoctor is a company that supplies pharmacies and has been putting about the word that they’ll soon be able to supply them with vaccine doses for private sale—most media coverage I found names them specifically. However, the pharmacies themselves are responsible for setting the price and managing bookings or whatever. All Pharmadoctor does for the end user is tell you which pharmacies they are supplying and give you the following pricing guidance:
Some places offering bookings:
Rose Pharmacy (Deptford, London) replied to my e-mail on 21st March saying they would offer Pfizer for £80 and later in April said Novavax for £50.
JP Pharmacy (Camden High St, London) offers Pfizer for £85
Fleet Street Clinic (London), £95 “initial price” for the updated Pfizer vaccine.
Doctorcall (at-home service), which vaccine not specified, £90 “in addition to the cost of the visit” which seem to be from £195.
I’ve found that most pharmacies on Pharmadoctor’s FInd a Pharmacy button have little or no web presence and often don’t explicitly own up to offering private COVID jabs. I’ve e-mailed a couple to see what they say. Here’s a list of pharmacies I’ve tried but not heard from, mostly for my own records:
Medirex Pharmacy
Murrays Chemist
did not contact House of Mistry because their contact form insists on having a phone number
will edit as I find more, especially any offering £45 jabs
Today I got a dose of Novavax for free, largely by luck that’s probably not reproducible.
It turns out that vials of Novavax contain 5 doses and only last a short time, I think for 24 hours. Pharmacies therefore need to batch bookings together, and I guess someone got tired of waiting and opted to just buy the entire vial for themselves, letting whoever pick up the other doses. I then found about this via Rochelle Harris, who in turn found out about it via a Facebook group (UK Novavax Vaccine info) for coordinating these things.
I’ve been linked to The benefits of Novavax explained which is optimistic about the strengths of Novavax, suggesting it has the potential to offer longer-term protection, and protection against variants as well.
I think the things the article says or implies about pushback from mRNA vaccine supporters seem unlikely to me—my guess is that in aggregate Wall Street benefits much more from eliminating COVID than it does from selling COVID treatments, though individual pharma companies might feel differently—but they seem like the sort of unlikely thing that someone who had reasonable beliefs about the science but spent too much time arguing on Twitter might end up believing. Regardless, I’m left unsure how to feel about its overall reliability, and would welcome thoughts one way or the other.