A headline shared on social media claiming that the UK government has suggested that COVID-19 vaccines are ‘basically pointless’ is incorrect.
The headline, The UK Govt, acknowledges that COVID injections are basically pointless as they offer no protection against reinfection (example: (here) comes from an article on a website that contains other reports containing COVID-19 conspiracy theories (here).
The relevant part of the article begins: “Hancock said the first vaccine does not protect anyone. He said it takes three weeks and a second dose before the body learns how to build immunity to coronavirus ear proteins.
“But he said that masks are necessary even after the second dose, because ‘we do not yet know if you will be able to transmit your coronavirus to anyone else,'” he said.
The only result for the quote that Health Minister Matt Hancock attributed to the gov.uk website is a speech given earlier in the week that the article was published (here).
While Hancock did warn that ‘your immune system is only about three weeks after your jab’, there is nothing about the second doses in the published speech. Since early January The UK Government’s policy has been to delay the administration of a second dose of vaccines so that more people can get an initial slap (here) which they say will provide some protection (here). This has been proven correct in the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine (here).
The article continues: “The British government essentially acknowledges that covid-19 vaccines are pointless and offer no protection.
“If someone after vaccination can still get sick with covid-19 and spread live viral particles through their sputum and aerosols, then the vaccines do not work.”
The vaccines have been shown to significantly protect the virus. This protection is not absolute and it is possible to still become ill after vaccination COVID-19; however, people who have been vaccinated are much less likely to get sick than people who have not been vaccinated. In one trial, for approximately every 17 people who became ill in the group that did not receive vaccines, only one person in the group that received the Moderna vaccine became ill. In the trial for the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, this ratio was about twenty to one.
Although this vaccine has been shown to reduce disease, it has not been proven to prevent humans from becoming infected with COVID-19 and transmitting it to other people. However, research on this continues and some early studies indicate that it does happen (here and here and here Time Stamp 1.10.25).
VERDICT
Untrue. Matt Hancock did not say that vaccines do not provide protection until after a second dose. Vaccines have been shown to provide significant protection against COVID-19. Whether vaccines prevent recipients from becoming infected or spreading the virus has not yet been determined.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work here.