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The United Kingdom has authorized two different vaccines against coronavirus: one from Pfizer / BioNTech and the other from AstraZeneca / University of Oxford.
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Both require two doses, administered several weeks apart.
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The British government is suggesting that people can mix and match their two COVID-19 sockets, if necessary.
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There is a test in progress to see if mixing different shots would work well, but there are still no results.
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With vaccines from AstraZeneca and Pfizer now authorized for emergency use, the UK has two different COVID-19 vaccines available to fight the pandemic. Both require people to take two injections, several weeks apart.
But if people forget which one they bought first, or if the providers run out of one type or another, the UK government is saying: don’t worry.
In guidelines recently updated on New Year’s Eve, the day after the AstraZeneca vaccine was authorized for use in the UK, the British government suggested that people could mix and match their two injections of COVID-19 – and government experts until even think that there is a chance that people will take better protection against coronavirus infections that 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 product available locally to complete the program,” says the new UK council for providers.
However, experts and government officials agree that mixing 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 British government writes in its new guideline that “there is no evidence on the interchangeability of COVID-19 vaccines”.
“We are 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 being driven by data right now.”
It is possible that mixing different vaccines could provide people with more robust protection against infection – and government officials in the UK are launching the 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,” said Kate Bingham, chairman of the UK’s vaccination task force, during a recent interview.
Britain has released two different vaccines for emergency use so far. First, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine received a green light in the UK on December 2, and then the AstraZeneca / University of Oxford vaccine on December 30. Both vaccines were designed to be administered in two doses, several weeks apart. But they are not the same type of inoculation, nor are they designed to be taken together.
The Pfizer vaccine is a new type of messenger RNA vaccine, while AstraZeneca uses viral vector technology. Working together, it is possible that they will provide people with a solid double response of good cell phones (from AstraZeneca) and good antibodies (from Pfizer), as Kate Duffy of Business Insider recently reported.
“Antibodies block the absorption of viruses by cells, and cell T cells identify cells that have been infected and eliminate them,” said Bingham. “You ideally want to have both.”
But John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University, wants more evidence that the strategy may actually work before it is recommended.
Moore told the Times that officials “seem to have completely abandoned science now and are just trying to guess how to get out of the mess.”
Less than 2% of the UK population is vaccinated, with a new variant of rapid spread on the loose
The UK has recently been hit by more coronavirus infections, a growing wave fueled in part by what is suspected to be a rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus. The new variant, called B.1.1.7, is no longer deadly, and experts believe that vaccines will also be successful in fighting it.
The country is now pushing for as many people as possible to be vaccinated with a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine before administering the second booster dose.
“At this stage of the pandemic, prioritizing the first doses of the vaccine to as many people on the priority list as possible will protect the greatest number of people at risk in the shortest possible time,” British officials said in a statement on Tuesday. .
Less than 1.5% of people in the UK have received injections so far, according to Bloomberg’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker.
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