The UK will focus on giving as many people as possible a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, even if it slows down the administration of a second vaccine, the government said Tuesday, despite a lack of data on the extent of the immunity conferred by a single dose.
The news comes as scientists in Europe debate whether recipients should be given one dose instead of two, given the scarcity of the vaccine, the difficulties in warding off a winter wave of infections, and a rapidly rising death toll.
The problem: While scientists say a single dose can provide enough immunity to stop the virus from spreading, there isn’t enough data to confirm this, as the clinical trials for available vaccines and those nearing authorization were all designed around a two dose regimen.
More about Covid-19 Vaccines
Great Britain, under severe pressure from the spread of a new, more contagious variant of the virus, is the first European government to change its policy. It emphasized that vaccine recipients would still receive a second dose, just three months later than planned.
Some provinces in Canada have delayed the second dose to inoculate more people at once, and Belgium is considering a similar approach.
“The priority should be to give as many people in high-risk groups their first dose as possible, rather than giving the required two doses in the shortest amount of time,” said a UK health service spokesperson.
A vaccine made by Pfizer Inc.
and BioNTech SE was the first to be authorized in the West. It is now being rolled out worldwide following emergency licensing by several regulators based on a successful, month-long trial that involved two injections of more than 20,000 volunteers. The second injection was administered 21 days after the first.
While the study data shows that the vaccine conferred immunity to more than 50% of the participants after the first dose, bringing just one injection to market would require a new study in which only one dose would be administered to a different group of volunteers, said BioNTech Chief Executive Uğur. Şahin.
“The next generation of the vaccine may be just one dose,” said Dr. Sahin.
As drug makers proliferate Covid-19 vaccines, cybersecurity experts warn of the growing threat of tampering and theft from organized crime networks.
He added that production bottlenecks meant that vaccines would not tangibly slow the spread of the virus for months, meaning social restrictions must remain in place.
“We need other vaccine makers to get market approval next year, ideally in the first quarter … We just need more companies to deliver more doses,” said Dr. Sahin.
A vaccine developed by Moderna Inc.,
which was approved in the US and could get the green light from the European Union regulator in January, also consists of two doses. A third vaccine, developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC and approved by the UK on Wednesday, also has two doses.
Proponents of a single-dose approach say it may be the only way to vaccinate enough people to prevent another big surge in infections next winter, due to limited availability.
The EU governments have purchased only enough Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to inoculate 150 million people out of a total population of nearly 450 million. This quota will not be fully delivered until the end of next year.
Scientists are working at breakneck speed on the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Their ultimate goal: to immunize enough of the world’s population to achieve herd immunity. (Originally published July 24, 2020)
Most scientists agree that more than 60% of the population must be immunized to achieve immunity to the herd, with enough people immune, either through vaccination or contraction, to prevent the spread of a pathogen. to stop.
In Belgium, Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke has asked the country’s vaccines task force to investigate whether it should delay the administration of the second injection in order to give the first dose to a larger number of people more quickly.
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Pierre Van Damme, a senior member of the task force, said on Monday that using just one injection would allow vaccination of the majority of Belgium’s 11.5 million residents before the summer. A government spokesman said a decision will be made in the next two weeks.
In Britain, Professor David Salisbury, formerly responsible for the country’s immunization program, had campaigned to delay the second injection until all at-risk people had had the first dose. After two weeks of declining infections, new cases in the UK have risen sharply since the beginning of December.
On December 22, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in the Independent newspaper that continuing the previously planned schedule for a second admission would result in “colossal” damage in terms of infection rates, deaths and economic impact.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]
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