More at-risk people need to be vaccinated faster, experts have said, as they agreed to a new dosing regimen which will see a speedier rollout of the coronavirus vaccines.
The group of experts, which advise the Government on vaccination, said that the focus should be on giving at-risk people the first dose of whichever vaccine they receive, rather than providing the required two doses in as short a time as possible.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said that everyone who receives the Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccines will still receive their second dose and this will be within 12 weeks of the first.
The UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine.
The British government has ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine, enough to vaccinate 50 million people. Other countries will be watching closely: Australia has ordered over 50 million doses, Canada 20 million, and worldwide over 2.5 billion doses have been preordered. AstraZeneca expects to be able to supply large numbers of doses within the first quarter of 2021.
Notably, British people will receive two full doses of the vaccine, which in trials prevented people from falling ill with COVID-19 62% of the time. This is despite trials initially suggesting that an alternative dosing strategy – using half a dose followed by a full dose – could be much more effective, preventing illness with 90% efficacy.
Pfizer warned today there is no data to show a single dose of its coronavirus vaccine provides long-term protection, after the UK scrapped its original jab rollout plan.
The UK medical regulator is now recommending Covid jabs are given in two doses three months apart, rather than over the intended four-week period, to allow millions more people to be immunised over a shorter time period.
The strategy will apply to both Pfizer/BioNTech s vaccine and the newly approved jab by Oxford/AstraZeneca, despite limited data around the effectiveness of the initial doses.
It is a direct response to spiking Covid cases and hospitalisations across the UK that are being driven by a new, highly-infectious strain that emerged in the South East England in September.
Why the second dose of the Covid vaccine is now being administered up to 12 weeks after the first
Some scientists have welcomed the decision but Pfizer said that it only assessed its vaccine on a two-dose regimen whereby people were given the jab three weeks apart
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Global pandemic is not over and wonât be for a long time yet but the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is a beacon of hope
The UK jab has a lot of advantages over other vaccines when it comes to fighting the pandemic throughout the world
Daniel Smith
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