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LONDON (AP) – Two British studies published on Monday showed COVID-19 vaccination programs are contributing to a sharp drop in hospitalizations, raising hopes that vaccines will work just as well in the real world as in carefully controlled studies .
Preliminary results from a study in Scotland found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduced hospital admissions by up to 85% four weeks after the first dose, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine reduced admissions by up to 94%. In England, preliminary data from a study of health workers showed that the Pfizer vaccine reduced the risk of catching COVID-19 by 70% after one dose, a figure that rose to 85% after the second.
“This new evidence shows that the jab protects you and those around you,” said UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock. “It is important that we see as much evidence as possible on the impact of the vaccine on protection and on transmission and we will continue to publish evidence as we gather it. ”
The studies were released as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented plans on Monday to ease a lockdown that has closed pubs, schools and non-essential stores since early January. The deployment of the vaccine is essential to bring the country back to a certain sense of normalcy. More than 17.5 million people have received a dose of the vaccine to date – over a third of the UK’s adult population.
Britain has experienced Europe’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 120,000 deaths.
Public Health England said its study of health workers suggests that the vaccine may help prevent the transmission of the virus “because you can’t spread the virus if you don’t have an infection.” The results are based on COVID-19 tests performed every two weeks that detect infections whether or not someone is showing symptoms.
Wider tests in the general population showed that the Pfizer vaccine was 57% effective in preventing symptomatic illnesses in people over 80 years of age three to four weeks after the first dose. This increased to over 85% after the second dose. Overall, hospitalizations and deaths are expected to be reduced by more than 75% after a dose of the vaccine, Public Health England said.
The agency said it is still monitoring the impact of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but “early signs in the data suggest that it offers good levels of protection from the first dose.”
British regulators authorized widespread use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on December 30, nearly a month after approving the Pfizer vaccine.
The Scotland study was conducted by scientists from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland.
Preliminary results were based on a comparison of people who had received a dose of the vaccine and those who had not yet been vaccinated. The data was collected between December 8 and February 15, during which time 21% of the Scottish population received their first vaccine.
“These results are very encouraging and have given us good reason to be optimistic about the future,” said Professor Aziz Sheikh, Director of the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh. “We now have national evidence – across a country – that immunization offers protection against hospitalizations from COVID-19.”
About 650,000 people in Scotland received the Pfizer vaccine during the study period and 490,000 received the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Usher Institute said. As hospitalization data was collected 28 days after inoculation, hospital admissions data were from a subset of 220,000 people who received the Pfizer vaccine and 45,000 people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine. .
Outside experts have said that while the results in Scotland are encouraging, they should be interpreted with caution due to the nature of this type of observational study. In particular, relatively few people were hospitalized after receiving the vaccines during the study period.
Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, urged those making policy decisions on the pandemic to be careful.
“It will be important that euphoria, especially from political sources who do not understand the uncertainty of numerical values, does not provoke premature decision making,” he said.
Earlier this month, Israel reported encouraging results from people receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Six weeks after the start of vaccinations for people over 60, there has been a 41% drop in confirmed COVID-19 infections and a 31% drop in hospitalizations, according to the country’s health ministry.
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Follow all of the PA’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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