LONDON (AP) – The UK health chief has welcomed a new study suggesting that a single dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine provides a high level of protection for 12 weeks, saying it supports the government’s controversial strategy to delay the second shot so. it can protect more people quickly with a first dose.
Britain’s decision has been criticized by other European countries as risky, but Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday that the study “supports the strategy we have taken and that it shows the world that the Oxford vaccine works effectively.”
Hancock’s comments come after the University of Oxford published a study showing that the transmission of the virus is reduced by two thirds and serious diseases are prevented.
Mene Pangalos, executive vice president of research and development on biopharmaceuticals at AstraZeneca, said that no patients experienced severe COVID-19 and that they needed hospitalization three weeks after receiving a first dose, and that efficacy was up to 12 weeks after the initial survey appears to be rising.
“Our data suggest you want to be as close to the twelve weeks as you can” for the second dose, Pangalos said during a news conference.
The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it did not address the dosage of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the other one currently in use in the UK. to prolong the time between doses.
But research at Oxford has been greeted with excitement by British officials under pressure to justify their decision to delay the second dose.
‘That reduction in transmission, as well as the fact that there are no hospitalizations, its combination is very good news. And it categorically supports the strategy we used to have a twelve-week gap between the doses, ‘Hancock told Sky News.
Some countries, including France, have allowed the AstraZeneca vaccine only for use among people under 65, saying there is not enough evidence to say whether it works in older adults. Belgium only granted it to people under 55 years of age.
One of the principal investigators of the Oxford vaccine project, dr. Andrew Pollard, said: “we expect it to be very effective in older adults” and says more information will be available in the next few weeks.
Pangalos noted that the European Medicines Agency has approved the vaccine for use in all people over 18 years of age.
“How individual countries decide to implement vaccines ultimately depends on the vaccine supply they have,” he said.
Vaccine supply is a sensitive issue in the European Union, which is unhappy that AstraZeneca is cutting back on the number of doses it plans to supply to the EU in the short term. The company said last month that it plans to reduce initial deliveries within the EU from 80 million doses to 31 million doses due to the reduced yields of its manufacturing plants in Europe.
It has since applied to deliver 9 million additional doses to the bloc of 27 countries, whose leaders are being criticized for what is seen as slow progress in vaccinating the population.
Britain has the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in Europe, with more than 108,000 deaths, and is in its third national exclusion as authorities try to contain a new, more transmissible virus variant first identified in the south of England.
Other variants are also of concern. Public health officials in England go door to door trying to test all adults in eight targeted communities in an effort to prevent a new strain first identified in South Africa from spreading further.
To date, 105 cases of the variant have been identified in the UK, of which 11 in people without ties to overseas travel. According to scientists, there is no evidence that the South African variant is more serious than the original virus, but it can be more contagious. There is also concern that current vaccines may be less effective against the variant because it contains a mutation of the characteristic ear protein of the virus that targets the existing vaccines.
This is worrying because the UK wants to vaccinate its own population against the virus. Nearly 10 million people received the first of their two shots, including the majority of those over 80 and those in nursing homes.
Pollard said Oxford scientists believe the AstraZeneca vaccine will continue to provide protection against new variants of COVID-19, although they are still waiting for it.
He said even if the virus adapts, it does not mean that we will not still have protection against serious diseases. “
‘If we do have to update the vaccines, it’s actually a relatively simple process. “It only takes a matter of months, rather than the huge efforts that everyone went through last year to get the large-scale trials going,” he told the BBC.
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