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Two more European countries, Germany and Denmark, have announced that they are studying postponing the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to immunize as many people as possible with one dose as soon as possible.
The measure was adopted by the UK’s national health authorities, based on data from the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, which states that the first dose guarantees “substantial protection, particularly for severe Covid-19, within two three weeks of vaccination ”.
According to them, the second dose is more important for the duration of protection than for its effectiveness, and guarantees only a marginal increase in defenses. In the UK, the second dose, previously scheduled for 28 days after the first, is now due four months later.
In a statement Monday night announcing a new lockdown in England, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that by mid-February, priority groups – the elderly and healthcare professionals – would be immunized. According to him, this will allow the new restrictions to be relaxed.
Scientists who defended delaying the second dose of the immunizer in the UK said this booster is more important for the duration of protection than for the effectiveness of the vaccine. An article published in December in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that the first dose would have an efficacy of 52%, therefore above the 50% considered a minimum level by international entities, such as the WHO.
The objective of the change in strategy in the United Kingdom, now considered by other countries, is to reach 70% of the immunized population as soon as possible, the so-called herd immunity, which would control the transmission of the coronavirus.
Germany and Denmark began to explore the idea after noticing slow progress in vaccination, not least because of a lack of approved options and a lack of manufacturing capacity. In Belgium, the idea was also championed by the epidemiologist and member of the vaccination working group Pierre Van Damme.
In Germany, the Ministry of Health asked the Robert Koch Institute, responsible for the control of communicable diseases, to study the possibility of adopting the same strategy.
Although it is the home of BioNTech, which developed with Pfizer the only vaccine approved by the European Union until this Monday (4), Germany has suffered the same shortages that affect other European countries, and “a strategy in which so many people find themselves getting vaccinated as soon as possible is more effective, “Leif Erik Sander, head of the vaccine research team at Berlin’s Charité hospital, told the Guardian newspaper in Britain.
The head of the German vaccine committee, Thomas Mertens, told German media that another option being studied is to use each bottle of the immunizer in six doses, instead of the five recommended by the manufacturers.
In Denmark, the Health Ministry has also asked the disease control agency to assess the gap between vaccine doses within up to six weeks.
BioNTech, however, stated that there is no scientific support for decisions to spread the vaccine doses further. According to the German manufacturer, clinical trials applied two doses 21 days apart, and it is only possible to draw conclusions about the safety and efficacy of the product in this dosage schedule.
The same statement was made by the European Medicines Agency, which approved the immunizer for use in the EU, to the British newspaper Financial Times. “Any change in dose spacing would require a variation in marketing authorization, as well as more clinical data to support that change. Otherwise, it would be considered ‘unauthorized use’ (without specific recommendation), ”the agency said.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the highest authority on the matter in the United States, told CNN that the country will not follow the British example of postponing the second dose.
A survey carried out by Euronews based on data from national health agencies indicates that Denmark has so far vaccinated 40,500 inhabitants, or 0.78% of its population. In Germany, the rate is 0.23%, with 239 thousand vaccines applied.
The United Kingdom, which began its vaccination effort about a month ago, has already reached 1 million doses applied, about 1.4% of the population.
Italy administered 118.6 thousand doses (0.13%) and Portugal vaccinated 0.16% of its residents. In France, news that just over 500 people had been immunized in the first week of the European campaign prompted President Emmanuel Macron to demand explanations from the Health Ministry.
The French government says it has 2 million vaccines available and promises to vaccinate 1 million people in January.
