In a change of practice in the United States, Britain plans to give people a second dose of coronavirus vaccines within 12 weeks of their first injection, instead of 21 days, to speed up immunizations in so many people as quickly possible. The practice has drawn some criticism from experts around the world.
“It is an act of despair. It also runs counter to scientific protocols, ”Israeli epidemiologist Ron Balicer said on Saturday in an interview with Channel 12, noting that it is not yet known how a single dose will be effective in protecting the virus against the elderly and high-risk people.
Over a million people in the UK have already received their first injection of the Pfizer vaccine. Earlier this week, Britain also approved a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca that is substantially cheaper and easier to use.
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British authorities then outlined the new dosing regimen, which delays a person’s second vaccination from being administered by three weeks to being administered up to 12 weeks after the first injection. According to The New York Times, British health officials were also allowed to combine the vaccines if a second dose from one of the companies was not available.
A nurse prepares an injection of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Guy’s Hospital in London, United Kingdom, December 8, 2020. (Frank Augstein / AP)
“In the short term, the further increase in vaccine effectiveness from the second dose is likely to be modest. The vast majority of initial protection against clinical disease occurs after the first dose of the vaccine, ”said British medical officials.
The UK plans to increase vaccination on Monday, using 530,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and has set a goal to vaccinate 2 million people a week as soon as possible.
Even so, the new plan faced criticism. The UK’s leading doctors’ union has warned that postponing the second dose causes huge scheduling problems for thousands of partially vaccinated seniors and vulnerable people.
“It is grossly and grossly unfair for tens of thousands of our most at risk patients to try to reschedule their appointments now,” said Richard Vautrey of the British Medical Association.
Responding to the intention to mix vaccines – a practice prohibited by the CDC, – John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University, told The New York Times that British officials “seem to have completely abandoned science now and are just trying to guess their out of a mess. ”
The UK on Saturday set a daily record for new coronavirus infections – 57,725 – and looked set to overtake Italy once again to become the hardest hit country in Europe, with almost 75,000 deaths from COVID-19. The fear is that, with the increase in infections, the number of deaths will also increase in the coming weeks.
The UK recorded its top five daily numbers of new infections in the past five days – all over 50,000 and double the number just a few weeks ago.