New UK COVID-19 vaccine recommendations say it’s reasonable for people to mix and match different vaccines, though there’s no evidence yet that works

• The UK has authorized two different coronavirus vaccines: one from Pfizer / BioNTech and another from AstraZeneca / University of Oxford.

• Both require two doses, several weeks apart.

• The UK government suggests people could mix and match their two COVID-19 injections, if needed.

• A test is underway to see how well mixing different shots would work, but there are no results yet.

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With AstraZeneca and Pfizer injections now cleared for emergency use, the UK has two different COVID-19 vaccines to fight the pandemic. Both require people to be struck twice, several weeks apart.

But, if people forget which one they got first, or if the suppliers are running out of one type or the other, the UK government is now saying no worries.

In freshly updated guidelines on New Years Eve, a day after AstraZeneca’s vaccine was approved for use in the UK, the UK government suggested people could mix and match their two injections of COVID-19 – and government experts even believe there is a chance that people could get better protection against coronavirus infections this way.

If “the same vaccine is not available, or if the first product received is unknown, it is reasonable to offer a dose of the locally available product to supplement the schedule,” reads the UK’s new advice to providers.

However, experts and government officials agree that mixing the two vaccines in the hope of providing people with more robust protection against coronavirus infections is still a risky and untested strategy.

The “ Wild West ” of vaccination campaigns

Even the UK government writes in its new guidelines that “there is no evidence of the interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines.”

“We’re kind of in this Wild West,” Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, told The New York Times. “None of this is data driven yet.”

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It’s possible that mixing different vaccines could provide people with stronger protection against infection – and UK government officials are launching a so-called ‘mix and match’ trial, to find out if this is the case .

“The idea is that you can maximize the strength of this immune response to protect people,” Kate Bingham, chair of the UK Vaccine Task Force, said at a recent briefing.

Britain has so far authorized two different vaccines for emergency use. First, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine received the green light in the UK on December 2, followed by AstraZeneca / University of Oxford on December 30. These two vaccines were designed to be given as two injections, several weeks apart. But they are not the same type of inoculation, nor were they designed to be taken together.

Pfizer’s vaccine is a new type of messenger RNA vaccine, while AstraZeneca uses viral vector technology. By working together, it is possible that they can provide people with a strong double of a good cellular virus response (from AstraZeneca) and a good antibody (from Pfizer), as Kate Duffy of Business Insider.

“Antibodies block the uptake of viruses into cells, and cellular T cells identify cells that have been infected and kill them,” Bingham said. “Ideally you want to have both.”

But John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University, wants more evidence that the strategy can really work before it’s recommended.

Moore told The Times that officials “seem to have given up on science completely by now and are just trying to guess their way out of the mess.”

Less than 2% of the UK population is vaccinated, with a new variant that is rapidly spreading in the wild

The UK has recently come under fire with more coronavirus infections, a growing wave fueled in part by what is believed to be a rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus. The new variant, called B.1.1.7, is no more deadly, and experts expect vaccines to be successful in combating it as well.

The country is now working to get as many people vaccinated as possible with one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, before giving them their second booster shot.

“At this point in the pandemic, prioritizing the first doses of vaccine for as many people as possible on the priority list will protect as many people at risk as possible as soon as possible,” British officials said on Tuesday in a statement.

Less than 1.5% of people in the UK have been vaccinated so far, according to Bloomberg’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker.

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