LONDON (AP) – Two UK studies published on Monday showed that COVID-19 vaccination programs contribute to a sharp drop in hospitalizations, raising hopes that the shots will work as well in the real world as they have. done in carefully controlled studies.
Preliminary results from a study in Scotland found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduced hospital admissions by up to 85% four weeks after the first dose, while Oxford-AstraZeneca reduced admissions by up to 94 %. In England, preliminary data from a study by health workers showed that the Pfizer vaccine reduced the risk of COVID-19 uptake by 70% after a dose, a figure that rose to 85% after of the second.
“This new evidence shows that the sting protects you and protects those around you,” said UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock. “It is important that we see as much evidence as possible about the impact of the vaccine on protection and transmission and we will continue to publish evidence as we collect it.”
The studies were released when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday set out plans to ease a closure that has closed non-essential pubs, schools and shops since early January. The deployment of vaccines is essential to return to the country a certain sense of normalcy. More than 17.5 million have received a dose of vaccine so far – more than a third of the UK’s adult population.
Britain has had the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in Europe, with more than 120,000 dead.
Public Health England said its study on health workers suggests the vaccine may help prevent the transmission of the virus “as the virus cannot spread if it does not have an infection.” The results are based on COVID-19 tests performed every two weeks to detect infections, regardless of whether someone has symptoms or not.
Extensive testing in the general population showed that the Pfizer vaccine was 57% effective in preventing symptomatic disease in people over 80, three to four weeks after the first dose. This increased to more than 85% after the second dose. In general, hospitalizations and death should be reduced by more than 75% after a dose of the vaccine, Public Health England said.
The agency said it is still monitoring the impact of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but “early signs of the data suggest it provides good levels of protection from the first dose.”
UK regulators authorized widespread use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on December 30, almost a month after the Pfizer vaccine was approved.
The Scotland study was carried out by scientists from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland.
Preliminary findings were based on a comparison of people who had received a dose of vaccine and those who had not yet been inoculated. Data were collected between 8 December and 15 February, a period in which 21% of the population of Scotland received their first vaccine.
“These results are very encouraging and have given us great reasons to be optimistic about the future,” said Professor Aziz Sheikh, director of the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh. “We now have national evidence – across a country – that vaccination provides protection against hospitalizations for COVID-19.”
About 650,000 people in Scotland received the Pfizer vaccine during the study period and 490,000 received the AstraZeneca shot, the Usher Institute said. Because hospitalization data were collected 28 days after inoculation, hospital admission data came from a subset of 220,000 people who received the Pfizer vaccine and 45,000 who received the AstraZeneca shot.
External experts said that while the findings in Scotland are encouraging, they should be interpreted with caution due to the nature of this type of observational study. In particular, relatively few people were hospitalized after receiving vaccines during the study period.
Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, urged policy makers on the pandemic to be cautious.
“It will be important that euphoria, especially from political sources who do not understand the uncertainty of numerical values, does not cause premature decisions to be made,” he said.
Earlier this month, Israel reported encouraging results from people receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Six weeks after vaccinations for people over 60 began, there was a 41% drop in COVID-19-confirmed infections and a 31% decrease in hospitalizations, according to the country’s Ministry of Health.
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