Chattanooga Times Free Press

U.K. doctors seek review of 12-week gap between doses

- BY JILL LAWLESS

LONDON — A major British doctors’ group says the U.K. government should “urgently review” its decision to give people a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronaviru­s vaccine up to 12 weeks after the first, rather than the shorter gap recommende­d by the manufactur­er and the World Health Organizati­on.

The U.K., which has Europe’s deadliest coronaviru­s outbreak, adopted the policy in order to give as many people as possible a first dose of vaccine quickly. So far almost 5.9 million people in Britain have received a shot of either a vaccine made by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech or one developed by U.K.-Swedish pharmaceut­ical giant AstraZenec­a and Oxford University.

AstraZenec­a has said it believes a first dose of its vaccine offers protection after 12 weeks, but Pfizer says it has not tested the efficacy of its jab after such a long gap.

The British Medical Associatio­n on Saturday urged England’s chief medical officer to “urgently review the U.K.’s current position of second doses after 12 weeks.”

In a statement, the associatio­n said there was “growing concern from the medical profession regarding the delay of the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as Britain’s strategy has become increasing­ly isolated from many other countries.”

“No other nation has adopted the U.K.’s approach,” Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the BMA council, told the BBC.

He said the WHO had recommende­d that the second Pfizer vaccine shot could be given up to six weeks after the first but only “in exceptiona­l circumstan­ces.”

“I do understand the trade-off and the rationale, but if that was the right thing to do then we would see other nations following suit,” Nagpaul said.

Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England, defended the decision as “a reasonable scientific balance on the basis of both supply and also protecting the most people.”

Researcher­s in Britain have begun collecting blood samples from newly vaccinated people in order to study how many antibodies they are producing at different intervals, from 3 weeks to 24 months, to get an answer to the question of what timing is best for the shots.

The doctors’ concerns came a day after government medical advisers said there was evidence that a new variant of the virus first identified in southeast England carries a greater risk of death than the original strain.

 ?? LEON NEAL/POOL VIA AP ?? Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks Friday during a news conference at 10 Downing Street in London.
LEON NEAL/POOL VIA AP Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks Friday during a news conference at 10 Downing Street in London.

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