Health News
Estelle Shirbon
Andrew MacAskill
LONDON (Reuters) – British doctors said the government’s decision to postpone the administration of a booster injection of the coronavirus vaccine to vulnerable patients who have already received the first dose will be distressing and disturbing, their union said on Thursday. .
The government said on Wednesday that it wants to give as many people as possible a first dose before starting to administer reinforcements in 12 weeks, in an effort to provide more people with a degree of protection more quickly.
But Dr. Richard Vautrey, chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) committee for local family doctors, said it was “grossly and evidently unfair for tens of thousands of our most at risk patients to try to reschedule their appointments.”
For the newly approved vaccine developed by Oxford University and manufactured by AstraZeneca that is being launched in Britain next week, the plan is consistent with the discovery that waiting 12 weeks maximizes protection against the virus.
But in the case of the Pfizer / BioNTech injection that is already being applied, the manufacturer said that the injection was not evaluated in dosing schedules other than the recommended 21 days.
BMA said several doctors said the new approach would cause anguish in vulnerable patients and create logistical problems for the healthcare team.
“BMA believes that these are patients who have already been promised … that they will receive a second dose of vaccination from Pfizer next week; they gave their consent to receive it and, with reason, expect to receive it ”, said the BMA.
More than 944,000 people received the Pfizer vaccine as of December 27, the Ministry of Health said on Thursday.
BMA said it would support any doctor who decided to honor existing reinforcement appointments and urged the government to provide a “scientifically validated justification” for its new approach.
In a joint statement, medical directors across the UK said they recognized that the request to reschedule appointments would be difficult and would distress patients who wish to be fully immunized.
However, “in terms of protecting priority groups, a model where we can vaccinate twice as many people in the next 2-3 months is obviously much more preferable in terms of public health than one in which we vaccinate half the number, but with just a little more protection, ”they said.