JABS CUT THE RISK OF BAD ILLNESS BY 80%
As speed of vaccine rollout is set to DOUBLE, figures show...
THE NHS is to double the speed of vaccine rollout this month after a major study showed it is having a dramatic impact on hospital admissions and deaths.
Matt Hancock last night unveiled the ‘exciting’ findings, which for the first time show the real-world impact of mass vaccinations across England.
The Health Secretary said the figures showed that a single dose of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer jab cut the risk of hospitalisation for over-70s by 80 per cent. And he credited vaccines for bringing down admissions of over-80s to intensive care units to single figures in the last two weeks.
He told last night’s Downing Street press conference: ‘In the real world, across the UK right now the vaccine is helping both to protect the NHS and to save lives.’
He said the data suggested that Britain could break the link between case numbers and hospital admissions and deaths.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford, appeared to be the ‘slightly better’ of the two, he added, although both were ‘clearly very strong’.
The study contradicts the view in some European countries that have refused to recommend AstraZeneca for the over-65s after branding it ‘quasi-ineffective’. Mr Hancock said that hospital admissions were falling more quickly than cases, particularly among the older age groups who were vaccinated first.
He added: ‘This is a sign that the vaccine is working’ – so the UK was on track to end lockdown restrictions in time for summer.
‘The data that we’ve published today shows that the road map is achievable,’ he said, while urging the public to keep sticking to the rules and not to ‘blow it’.
Deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the data offered a glimpse of how the vaccine programme was ‘going to hopefully take us into a very different world in the next few months’.
Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said that in March the vaccination programme was being accelerated to twice the recent rate, with people aged 60 to 63 now being invited to have their first jabs.
That means that Britons as young as 40 could be offered a vaccine within a few weeks, followed by people in their 30s in April.
And this could result in the target of offering at least one dose to all adults – set as the end of July – being achieved much earlier.
The figures are also likely to intensify calls to bring forward the easing of lockdown rules.
More than 7.5million over-70s in England were included in the study and researchers found symptomatic infections fell around three weeks after one dose of either vaccine. A single shot of the AstraZeneca jab cut the risk by up to 73 per cent and a single shot of Pfizer by up to 61 per cent.
If someone who has had a single Pfizer dose does get infected, they then have a 43 per cent lower risk of emergency admission and a 51 per cent lower risk of dying.
Anyone infected after a single AstraZeneca dose has a 37 per cent lower risk of going to hospital. but there is not yet enough data to assess the impact of the Oxford vaccine on deaths.
Prof Van-Tam told the briefing that the study result ‘gives us those first glimpses of how, if we are patient and we give this vaccine programme time to have its full effect, it is going to hopefully take us into a very different world in the next few months’.
He added: ‘I think there’s quite a significant likelihood that a second dose of vaccine is going to mature your immune response, possibly make it broader and almost certainly make it longer than it would otherwise be.’ He said the study had vindicated Britain’s decision to give the AstraZeneca jab to older people while other countries had refused it due to a lack of clinical trial data for those age groups. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation had taken the view that it was ‘not immunologically plausible’ that the vaccine would work for younger people only.
‘I am not here to criticise other countries but to say that I think in time the data emerging from our programme will speak for itself and other countries will doubtless be very interested in it. Both of the vaccines that are in use in the UK right now are extremely effective.’
Mr Zahawi told the BBC that the rollout of second doses was also speeding up.
‘ In March you will see that number increase even more. The NHS have got all the protocols in place to deliver that,’ he said.
New figures yesterday showed that 21,091,267 coronavirus jabs had been given in the UK so far, a rise of 185,900 on the previous day. Of those, 20,275,451 were first doses and 815,816 second doses.
Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at Public Health England, said of the study: ‘This adds to growing evidence showing that the vaccines are working to reduce infections and save lives.
‘Even if you have been vaccinated, it is really important that you continue to act like you have the virus, practise good hand hygiene and stay at home.’
‘Both vaccines are extremely effective’