A single dose of AstraZeneca AZN,
The COVID-19 vaccine offers 76% protection for up to three months after the first injection and appears to reduce transmission, according to new research from the University of Oxford.
The preliminary results of the study, published in the medical journal The Lancet on Wednesday, but not yet peer-reviewed, apparently support the UK government’s policy of choosing to postpone the second dose of vaccines to inoculate as many people as possible. as soon as possible. The study suggests that the government’s 12-week interval between doses does not diminish protection.
The researchers found that the vaccine’s effectiveness was 76% after the first dose, with protection maintained until the second dose. The injection’s effectiveness in preventing coronavirus disease increases to 82.4%, since a second dose is administered after 12 weeks.
The results also showed a 67% reduction in positive COVID-19 swabs among vaccinees, suggesting AstraZeneca AZN,
The vaccine – which the Swedish-British pharmaceutical company developed with the University of Oxford – has a “substantial impact” in reducing transmission of the virus that causes the disease. But the researchers warned that a much larger sample will be needed to reach definitive conclusions about the risk of transmission.
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“This new data provides important verification of the interim data that helped regulators grant authorization for emergency use of the vaccine.”
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Prof. Andrew Pollard, chief investigator for the Oxford Vaccine Trial and co-author of the article, said the new data provides an “important verification” of the interim data “that helped regulators in the UK and elsewhere to grant the vaccine to emerge – authorization of use.
“It also helps to support the policy recommendation made by the Joint Vaccination and Immunization Committee for a 12-week prime-boost interval, while looking for the ideal approach to implant, and assures us that people are protected 22 days after a single dose of vaccine, ”added Pollard.
The data were based on 17,177 trial participants in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa.
Speaking at a news conference following the release of the new data, Pollard said the team of scientists at Oxford had already started adjusting the vaccine to fight the new strains of coronavirus and that one could be ready in the fall, with only small tests needed before that it could be implemented.
Britain’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, welcomed the results of the new study written on Twitter TWTR,
that the results were “absolutely superb” and showed that “vaccines are the way out of this pandemic”.
Ten million people in the UK have already received their first dose of a vaccine, according to the latest government data, said Hancock.
AstraZeneca’s shares rose 0.61% at the start of the London trading session on Wednesday.
“New data showing that the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine is highly effective with a 12-week interval between doses has made a leap forward in market advancement. This revives a sense of optimism about the reopening of society earlier, a little later, ”said Russ Mold, chief investment officer at AJ Bell.
The study comes after public health agencies in Belgium, France, Sweden, Poland and Austria have imposed age limits on who should receive the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, due to concerns that it may not be effective in people over 65 .
French President Emmanuel Macron referred to the AstraZeneca vaccine as “almost ineffective” in people over 65, as the country joined Sweden and Belgium in saying it would not administer the vaccine to anyone over 64, while Poland has set its limit at 60.
Read: AstraZeneca vaccine should only be administered to children under 65, recommends Germany, as the scarcity crisis in the EU deepens
Last week, the vaccines committee in Germany was the first member state of the European Union to recommend that the AstraZeneca-Oxford injection be used only in people between 18 and 64 years of age, citing “insufficient data”.
Italy’s drug regulator, AIFA, advised those over 55 to be inoculated with the vaccine developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer PFE,
and its German partner BioNTech BNTX,
or the one developed by US biotech Moderna MRNA,
that use the messenger RNA approach. This instructs cells to create proteins to generate a protective immune response against a virus.
Read: The EU drug regulator authorizes the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for all ages over 18
The European Medicines Authority, which last week gave the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine a green light for use in the 27-member block, acknowledged that the majority of participants in the AstraZeneca vaccine tests were between 18 and 55 years old, and that there was no it results in people old enough to provide a picture of how it will work in this group.