Jabs ‘still stopping severe Covid cases’

VACCINES are still offering strong protection against Covid, says an expert advising the government on a potential autumn booster campaign.

While immunity against mild illness wanes after several months, the jabs are keeping people out of hospital, said Prof Adam Finn of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

The JCVI is imminently expected to give ministers its official verdict on whether booster jabs should go ahead for 30million over-50s and the clinically vulnerable. The NHS in England has prepared for a push to start on September 6 alongside its annual flu campaign.

Scientists behind the Zoe Covid Study app said yesterday that the protection provided by two doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines starts to fade within six months. They found that the Pfizer jab was 88 per cent effective at preventing infection a month after the second dose, but after five to six months the protection decreased to 74 per cent.

With AstraZeneca, protection was 77 per cent effective one month after the second dose but that decreased to 67 per cent. Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s

Today programme, Prof Finn said: ‘I think the Zoe study, and a couple of other recent studies, do show the beginnings of a drop-off of protection against asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic disease.

‘But other studies are showing maintenance of good protection against serious illness and hospitalisation.

‘So that’s encouraging, actually... that people who’ve had two doses are still very much well protected against serious illness, which is our main objective. But we do need to watch out carefully to see if this waning begins to translate into occurrence of more severe cases because then boosters will be needed.’

It came as another 149 Covid deaths were reported yesterday, up from 85 just four weeks ago.

Another 35,847 people tested positive, the highest figure for a Wednesday since July 21.