The UK vaccinated old people first. At least here in Germany we had the problem that AstraZeneca was only allowed to be used with people <65. That could be one explanation.

No, the UK also vaccinated healthcare workers and all care home workers in the first phase too so there would have been many vaccinated under 60.

There are 441,498 staff working in care homes alone and nearly 90% of these were vaccinated in the first phase.

Weren't healthcare workers vaccinated predominantly with Pfizer in the UK?

all health workers and immunocompromised people as well. plenty of young people have been jabbed in the uk

Not just immunocompromised. Group 6 was anyone <65yo with a clinical condition which made them more vulnerable. Nearly 7 million people were eligable for that. I imagine they have nearly been done by now, and at least half would have had AZ, so that's 3.5m young(ish) people that have had AZ used.

>There is something strange going on in Scandinavia because UK has reported nothing special with two orders of magnitude more people vaccinated.

I don't want to start conspiracy theories but I wouldn't be surprised if it came to light that, in the UK, reports about deaths and side-effects have been suppressed. In the wake of a disastrous Brexit, the UK is in desperate need of a success story and with the Astrazeneca/Oxford vaccine seen as the British contender, it might have become a question of national pride to have it succeed. British newspapers (well, tabloids) present the UK vaccination rate as a vindictive competition with the EU.

The UK, like most countries, is very transparent with reporting side effects and has a robust system for capturing the data.

As a UK citizen, I would be very surprised. The government might want to do that, but I can't see the medical professionals standing for it.

> I wouldn't be surprised if it came to light that, in the UK, reports about deaths and side-effects have been suppressed

If we (I'm British) were accomplished enough to reputation-manage for the vaccine response, I'd have expected the initial (huge) death toll to have been under-reported too - which it clearly hasn't.

Please don’t start moronic conspiracy theories

It's about as moronic as the people calling individual EU countries' cautious response to the blood clotting cases a political face saving measure by Brussels.