The UK considers vaccines to be 80% effective in preventing hospital admissions in people over 80

LONDON (Reuters) – The Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines are more than 80% effective in preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations in people over 80 after one dose of either injection, Public Health England (PHE) said on Monday , citing a pre-print study.

PHE said the real-world study also showed that protection against symptomatic COVID in people over 70 varied between 57-61% for one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and between 60-73% for the Oxford-AstraZeneca four weeks after the first injection.

“These results may also help explain why the number of COVID admissions to intensive care units among the over-80s in the UK has fallen to single digits in recent weeks,” UK Health Minister Matt Hancock told a news conference. “This is really encouraging.”

Britain has now delivered a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine to more than 20 million people, or just over 30% of the population, with the elderly being prioritized.

PHE has submitted its analysis for peer review after providing initial findings of the true impact of the rollout a week ago. A separate study of health professionals has shown that one dose of a vaccine can reduce the number of people contracting asymptomatic COVID-19 by 70%.

The health authority said there is evidence that the Pfizer vaccine causes an 83% reduction in COVID-19 deaths among people over 80. There were no equivalent data for the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was administered at a later date.

SAVING LIVES

Mary Ramsay, PHE’s chief of immunizations, said that while more work needed to be done to understand the impact of vaccines on reducing coronavirus transmission, the effect of the rollout was already evident.

“This adds to growing evidence showing that the vaccines work to reduce infections and save lives,” she said.

Another PHE official said more work was needed to establish the efficacy of vaccines against the so-called Brazilian variant of the coronavirus.

The UK use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the elderly contrasts with many European countries, which have cited a lack of clinical trial data for their decision not to roll it out to older cohorts.

When asked whether the data justified Britain’s approach, Deputy Chief Medical Officer of England Jonathan Van Tam said it was “not immunologically plausible” that the vaccine would work in younger people and not the elderly.

“We felt it would almost certainly work,” he said. “The PHE data has clearly confirmed that approach today.”