LONDON (AP) – Two UK studies released on Monday showed that COVID-19 vaccination programs are contributing to a sharp drop in hospitalizations, raising hopes that the shots will work just as well as in carefully controlled studies.
Preliminary results from a study in Scotland found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine decreased by up to 85% four weeks after the first dose of hospital admissions, while the admissions in Oxford-AstraZeneca decreased to 94%. In England, preliminary data from a study among health professionals showed that the Pfizer vaccine reduced the risk of catching COVID-19 after one dose by 70%, a figure that rose to 85% after the second dose.
“This new evidence shows that the jab protects you and those around you,” said British Health Minister Matt Hancock. “It is important that we see as much evidence as possible about the impact of the vaccine on protection and transmission, and that we will continue to publish evidence as we gather it.”
The studies were announced when Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, on Monday set out plans to facilitate a closure that has closed bars, schools and non-essential shops since early January. The deployment of vaccines is critical to bring the country back to a level of normalcy. More than 17.5 million have so far received one dose of vaccine – more than a third of the British population.
Britain had the deadliest outbreak of coronavirus in Europe, with more than 120,000 deaths.
Public Health England said that the study of health workers suggests that the vaccine can help prevent the transmission of viruses, as you can not spread the virus if you are not infected. “The findings are based on COVID-19 testing, which is performed every two weeks to detect whether or not someone is showing symptoms.
Broader trials in the general population showed that the Pfizer vaccine was 57% effective in preventing symptomatic diseases in people over 80 three to four weeks after the first dose. It rose to more than 85% after the second dose. In general, hospitalizations and deaths should be reduced by more than 75% after one dose of the vaccine, Public Health England said.
The agency said it was still monitoring the impact of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but “early signals in the data indicate that it provides a good level of protection against the first dose.”
UK regulators approved the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on December 30, almost a month after they approved the Pfizer vaccine.
The study in Scotland was conducted by scientists from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Strathclyde and Scotland for public health.
The preliminary findings were based on a comparison of people who had received one dose of vaccine and those who had not yet been vaccinated. The data were collected between 8 December and 15 February, a period when 21% of the Scottish population received their first vaccine shot.
“These results are very encouraging and have given us good 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 – in an entire country – that vaccination provides protection against COVID-19 hospitalizations.”
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 vaccination, the data on hospital admissions come from a subset of 220,000 people who received the Pfizer vaccine, and 45,000 who received the AstraZeneca shot.
External experts said the findings in Scotland were encouraging, but that they should be interpreted with caution because of the nature of this type of observational study. In particular, relatively few people were admitted to the hospital after receiving the vaccines during the study period.
Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, urged those making political decisions about the pandemic to be careful.
“It is important that euphoria, especially from political sources that do not understand the uncertainty in the numerical values, does not make premature decisions,” he said, “cautious optimism is justified.”
Earlier this month, Israel reported encouraging results from people who received the Pfizer vaccine. Six weeks after vaccination began for people over 60, there was a 41% decrease in confirmed COVID-19 infections and a 31% decrease in hospitalizations, according to the Ministry of Health.
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