Astrazeneca vaccine may give longer protection

Oxford jab rollout to elderly could be why UK is avoiding European wave, say experts

ASTRAZENECA may offer longer-lasting immunity than other vaccines, scientists have said, amid claims that the jab helped Britain avoid the latest Covid wave in Europe.

Pascal Soriot, Astrazeneca’s chief executive, said the decision to give the Oxford vaccine to older people could be one of the reasons the UK is not seeing “so many hospitalisations relative to Europe” despite a high number of cases.

The Daily Telegraph understands that the company is preparing to release data showing that its jab offers longterm T-cell immunity for older people, even after antibodies wane. Mr Soriot said that the immunity provided by T-cells may be “more durable”.

Several countries, including France, Germany, Spain and Belgium, restricted the Astrazeneca vaccine to under-65s in the early stages of their rollouts, claiming there was not enough data to prove it worked in older people.

Yesterday daily infections in France passed 30,000 for the first time since August, with an increase of 63 per cent in a week, while Germany confirmed it was planning to make vaccination mandatory for soldiers. The seven-day average of Covid deaths in Germany is now twice that in Britain.

A senior government source said figures showed that Europe’s alarm over the Oxford jab was unwarranted. “European leaders had all these unfounded concerns about Astrazeneca and its use in older people,” said a source. “If you look at the data you can see us using it early has been incredibly helpful in terms of protecting older and vulnerable people from this disease for longer.”

British experts said Mr Soriot’s claims were “plausible”. Dr Peter English, the former chairman of the BMA Public Health Medicine Committee, said: “People whose immune systems have produced a strong T-cell response, but a weaker antibody response, might be more likely to be infected in the first place but more likely to be able to fight the infection and they will be much less likely to develop severe disease.”

Commenting on the UK’S high number of infections but low hospitalisation rate, he added: “It is plausible that this is because many people received the Astrazeneca vaccine, and this generated an excellent T-cell response, which means that while people can still be infected, and infectious, they are unlikely to be seriously unwell.”

Prof Matthew Snape of Oxford University, who was chief investigator on booster jab trials, said: “The best T-cell responses seem to come if you give a first dose of the Astrazeneca vaccine followed by Pfizer.”

Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of lockdown-septic Tory MPS, criticised European figures for snubbing the jab and called for Astrazeneca’s data to be made public. “Once more, it looks like political condemnation from Europe of Astrazeneca may have cost lives. I hope we will see the data,” he said.

Mr Soriot told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We haven’t seen many hospitalisations in the UK – a lot of infections, for sure – but what matters is are you severely ill or not, are you hospitalised or not? And we haven’t seen so many of these hospitalisations.”

Although cases are rising in Britain, with 42,484 recorded yesterday, deaths are down 5.5 per cent since last week and hospitalisations by 9.5 per cent.

Prof Eleanor Riley of the University of Edinburgh said a growing number of trials showed Astrazeneca initially gave higher levels of T-cells, even if MRNA vaccines such as Pfizer were better at producing antibodies. “Since the AZ vaccine is slightly better at inducing these T-cells, the implication is that it may provide longer term protection against hospitalisation and death,” she said.

It is the key question puzzling scientists and commentators. How is Britain managing to weather the latest deadly Covid storm while the defences of our European neighbours are crumbling?

Yesterday, Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of Astrazeneca, offered a possible answer. He suggested that the durability of T-cells from the Oxford jab could be keeping older people safer than those on the Continent, preventing hospitalisations and deaths, even though cases are still high.

Several countries including France, Germany, Spain and Belgium, restricted the Astrazeneca vaccine to under-65s in the early stages of their rollouts, claiming there was not enough data to prove it worked for older people.

That might have been an error, Mr Soriot suggests, because data are showing that the Astrazeneca jab offers long-term protection, hinting that the response is more durable than MRNA jabs such as Pfizer and Moderna. The problem is, nobody has seen this data and Astrazeneca could not say when it would be published.

Undoubtedly, T-cells play an important role in ongoing protection. Unlike antibodies, which wane over time, T-cells remain poised to trigger powerful immune responses, as well as directly destroying infected cells. They also seem to work against new variants.

Early data did indeed suggest that Astrazeneca was better at triggering T-cell immunity than Pfizer.

In April, the University of Birmingham found that five weeks after a first dose, people over 80 given Astrazeneca or Pfizer showed similar antibody responses, but double the T-cell response was observed in the Astrazeneca group. The strength of the T-cell response was also three times as high as it was for the Pfizer group.

By mid-june, Oxford University researchers had found there was still a robust T-cell response from the Astrazeneca jab at six months even after a single dose, despite big drops in antibody immunity.

Eleanor Riley, professor of immunology and infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh, said: “It seems that the Oxford-az vaccine initially induces higher levels of T-cells than the MRNA vaccines.

“These T-cells are important for long-term immune memory and also for inhibiting virus replication and killing infected cells once an infection becomes established.

“Since the AZ vaccine is slightly better at inducing these T-cells, the implication is that it may provide longer term protection against hospitalisation and death. I think this is the point that Dr Soriot was making.”

In July, scientists from Oxford and Switzerland also suggested that long-term immunity could be greater for adenovirus vaccines like Astrazeneca, because they created “cellular training camps” for T-cells.

However, recent research has shown that in the long term, MRNA vaccines also produce strong T-cell responses, maybe even stronger than Astrazeneca. A paper published yesterday in Nature by University Hospital Tübingen in Germany found that Pfizer produced nearly six times more T-cells than Astrazeneca 18 to 42 days after the second vaccination. Real-world effectiveness data have also

consistently shown that the MRNA vaccines are slightly better at preventing infection and serious disease than Astrazeneca, which is inconsistent with claims the Oxford vaccine is providing better protection.

What is more likely is that Britain has had so much infection recently that Covid it is on the brink of becoming an endemic virus. We also got our booster programme started earlier with more than 12 million adults now having had a third shot. Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that antibody levels are rising again in older age groups after starting to decline in the summer. In Europe, the take-up is much slower.

Whether it does eventually turn out that Astrazeneca affords more long-term protection, it is clear that rolling it out to our most vulnerable has prevented tens of thousands of deaths, and it was remiss of Europe to keep it out of the arms of their pensioners.

There will be myriad reasons why Britain is doing better than Europe. Astrazeneca has certainly played its part.