LONDON (AP) – British health chief has released new study suggesting a single dose of COVID-19 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine provides a high level of protection for 12 weeks, saying it supports the government’s delay the second shot. it can protect more people quickly with a first dose.
Britain’s decision has been criticized as risky by other European countries, but Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday that the study “supports the strategy we have adopted and shows the world that the Oxford vaccine works effectively “.
Hancock’s comments came after Oxford University published a study showing how the vaccine cut transmission of the virus by two-thirds and prevented serious illness.
Mene Pangalos, executive vice president of biopharmaceutical research and development at AstraZeneca, said no patient experienced severe COVID-19 or needed hospitalization three weeks after receiving a first dose and that efficacy appeared to increase to 12 weeks. after the initial vaccination.
“Our data suggests you want to be as close as possible to twelve weeks” for the second dose, Pangalos told a news conference.
The study has not yet been peer-reviewed and did not address the dosage of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the other currently in use in the UK. Pfizer recommends that its catches be made with a 21-day separation and has not approved the UK government’s decision. to prolong the time between doses.
But the Oxford investigation was enthusiastically received by UK officials under pressure to justify its decision to delay the second dose.
“This reduction in transmission, as well as the fact that there are no hospitalizations, the combination of this is very good news. And it categorically supports the strategy we have been adopting to have a 12-week difference between doses. Hancock told Sky News.
Some countries, including France, have authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine only for use in people under 65, saying there is not enough evidence to say if it works in older adults. Belgium has only authorized it for people aged 55 and under.
Still, one of the lead researchers on the Oxford vaccine project, Dr Andrew Pollard, said it “expects it to be highly effective in older adults” and said more data should be available in the coming weeks.
Pangalos noted that the European Medicines Agency had authorized the vaccine for use in all people over 18 years of age.
“The way countries decide to apply vaccines ultimately depends on these depending on the supply of vaccines they have,” he said.
The supply of vaccines is a sensitive issue in the European Union, regretting that AstraZeneca reduces the number of doses it plans to supply to the EU in the short term. The company said last month that it planned to reduce initial deliveries to the EU from 80 million doses to 31 million doses due to reduced yields at its manufacturing plants in Europe.
It has since been applied to supply nine million additional doses to the bloc of 27 countries, whose leaders face criticism for what is perceived as slow progress in population inoculation.
Britain has the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in Europe, with more than 108,000 dead, and is in its third national blockade, as authorities try to contain a new, more transmissible virus variant first identified in the south-east. of England.
Other variants are also a concern. Public health officials in England are going door-to-door, trying to test all adults in eight target communities to try to prevent a new strain first identified in South Africa from spreading further.
So far 105 cases of the variant have been identified in the UK, 11 of them in unrelated people traveling abroad. Scientists say there is no evidence that the South African variant is more severe than the original virus, but it may be more contagious. It is also concerned that current vaccines may be less effective against this variant because it contains a mutation in the ear protein characteristic of the virus to which existing vaccines are directed.
This is a concern, as the UK is rushing to vaccinate its own population against the virus. Nearly 10 million people have received the first of its two shots, including most people over the age of 80 and those in residences.
Pollard said Oxford scientists believe the AstraZeneca vaccine will continue to offer protection against new variants of COVID-19, although they are still waiting for data on this.
He said that even if the virus adapts “this does not mean that we do not yet have protection against serious diseases.”
“If we need to upgrade vaccines, it’s actually a relatively simple process. It only takes a matter of months, rather than the huge efforts everyone made last year to conduct the large-scale trials,” he told the BBC.
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