Deployment of vaccines in the UK is accelerating, but doctors want a faster second dose

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s COVID-19 vaccine picked up pace on Saturday, with 5.9 million people taking the first dose, but doctors challenged the government over its policy of delaying a second shot of the vaccine Pfizer up to 12 weeks.

The British government is widening the gap between the first and second shots as it seeks to ensure as many people as possible protection against an initial dose of vaccine.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Friday that the new British variant of COVID-19 could be associated with a higher level of mortality, as the country’s death toll from COVID-19 is close to 100,000, and reach 97,329 on Saturday.

But in a letter to England’s medical director (CMO) Chris Whitty, the British Medical Association said leaving the 12-week interval for the Pfizer vaccine went against the guidelines of the World Health Organization. Health.

They urged the government to close the gap between Pfizer doses to a maximum of six weeks.

The vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and BioNTech, have warned that they have no evidence that their vaccine will continue to be protective if the second dose is given more than three weeks after the first.

Leaving a 12-week gap allows Britain’s vaccination program to move quickly.

Government data released on Saturday shows that 5.86 million people have received a first dose of vaccine, after having had 478,248 people in the last 24 hours.

Whitty said Friday that the longest wait between doses was a “public health decision” aimed at vaccinating many more people and based on the fact that the vast majority of protection comes from the first punch.

The Department of Health and Social Welfare said the decision on the 12-week gap was made after a “thorough review of the data” and was in line with the recommendations of the four UK chief medical officers.

Britain uses the Pfizer vaccine and another from AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca has supported the gap between its blows, saying the data showed an 8- to 12-week gap was a “sweet spot” for effectiveness.

After Johnson’s warnings about the deadliest nature of the new variant, some scientists said Saturday was too early to be clear what the evidence showed.

“The question of whether it is more dangerous in terms of mortality I think is still open,” Graham Medley, a professor of infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the BBC.