LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s boost of COVID-19 vaccination increased on Saturday, with 5.9 million people receiving the first dose, but doctors challenged the government over its policy of postponing a second injection of the Pfizer vaccine for up to 12 weeks.
The British government is widening the gap between the first and the second injection, as it seeks to ensure that as many people as possible receive some protection with an initial dose of vaccine.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Friday that the new variant of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom may be associated with a higher level of mortality, as the COVID-19 death count in the country approaches the 100,000 – reaching 97,329 on Saturday.
But in a letter to England’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Chris Whitty, the British Medical Association said that leaving the 12-week break for the Pfizer vaccine was against the guidelines of the World Health Organization.
They urged the government to shorten the interval between doses of Pfizer to a maximum of six weeks.
Vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and BioNTech, warned that they have no evidence that their vaccine would continue to be protective if the second dose was given more than three weeks after the first.
Leaving a 12-week break is allowing Britain’s vaccine program to proceed quickly.
Government data published on Saturday showed that 5.86 million people had already received the first dose of the vaccine, after a record 478,248 people had received the vaccine in the past 24 hours.
Whitty said on Friday that the longest wait between doses is a “public health decision” that aims to vaccinate many more people and based on the fact that the vast majority of protection comes from the first injection.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the decision on the 12-week interval was taken after “a complete review of the data” and was in line with the recommendations of the UK’s four medical directors.
Britain is using the Pfizer vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine. AstraZeneca supported the gap between its jabs, saying that the data showed that an 8 to 12 week interval was an “ideal point” for effectiveness.
Following Johnson’s warnings about the more deadly nature of the new variant, some scientists said on Saturday that it was too early to be clear what the evidence was showing.
“The question of whether it is more dangerous in terms of mortality, I think, is still open,” Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the BBC.
Editing by Jason Neely and Helen Popper