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The UK will have to watch “very carefully” the effectiveness of a single dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, the country’s top scientific adviser said.
Professor Patrick Vallance’s comments came after reports from Israel suggested that the protection it provides may be much less than that shown in the trials.
Israelis began receiving the first injections of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech on December 19 in one of the fastest vaccination launches in the world.
In response to Israel’s claims that the efficacy of the first dose of Pfizer vaccine can be as low as 33%, Sir Patrick said that studies showed that from day 10 after vaccination to 21 days and beyond , it was “much closer to 89%”.
However, he added that “when you go into real-world practice, things are rarely as good as clinical trials.”
He told Sky News: “It’s probably not that high in practice, but I don’t think it’s as low as the numbers you just gave.”
Scientists in Israel, where about a quarter of the population has already been vaccinated, reportedly studied preliminary data on 200,000 vaccinated people.
The study reportedly suggests that a 33% drop in positivity was seen in the vaccinated group on day 14 after vaccination.
Professor Vallance said clinical study studies suggest that if you look at the data from day zero, the overall figure is around 50%.
But he added that protection is not expected in the first 10 days because the immune system has not had a chance to develop and some people may have been infected before receiving the vaccine.
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“I don’t know exactly what Israel is looking at, they are looking at the total period from day zero and that doesn’t give an exact comparison.
“But we have to look at this very carefully, we just have to keep measuring and understanding it,” he said.
Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was vital that councils and policies take into account the latest available data.
He said: “However, the reports that have come in from Israel are insufficient to provide any evidence that the current UK policy regarding delaying the second dose of vaccines is incorrect in any way.
“The reported efficacy of one dose has not been compared using the same methods and patients with the efficacy of two doses at 84 days.
“The details of the different studies have only been released, apparently at a press conference, the reasons why are not clear.
“There is a need for at least a preprint that provides the detailed methods and data to understand and interpret these findings.”
He added: “It is not sensible to compare the efficacy derived from such an observational study, which is subject to many biases, with the efficacy derived from randomized trials.”
Professor Evans explained that it was important to recognize that in the UK, efficacy against detected Covid-19 may be less important than efficacy against hospitalization and death.
He said: “The UK will soon have its own data showing efficacy after the first dose for the different vaccines currently in use and any policy changes should await more robust data.
“If, for example, efficacy after one dose was 33% but efficacy after two doses was 60%, UK policy would still be justified.
“Similar arguments apply regarding efficacy against serious diseases.”
Israel is providing weekly data updates on its coronavirus outbreak to Pfizer under a collaboration agreement that can help other countries adjust their vaccination campaigns and achieve “herd immunity,” authorities said.
During the weekly status reports, Israel will provide Pfizer with epidemiological data such as: the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, how many patients were on ventilators, how many died, as well as age and other demographic breakdown. About a quarter of Israelis have received their first vaccine and 3.5% have already received their second dose.
The Israeli government has decided to extend the country’s coronavirus lockdown until the end of the month after a surge in infections, despite the vaccination campaign.
Israel began its third blockade in late December and tightened it on January 8, with officials saying at the time that it would be suspended after two weeks if the number of daily cases fell enough.
Since the vaccines were launched last month, more than 2.2 million of Israel’s nine million people have been inoculated, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said.
Despite the swift operation, Israel said it had recorded a daily record of just over 10,000 new cases in the previous 24 hours.
The increase in infections, despite the blockade and vaccinations, has been attributed to mutations of the virus and the ignorance on the part of some people of the assembly restrictions.
“Mutations … spread faster from person to person, and that accelerates the epidemic,” Dr. Boaz Lev, head of the health ministry council that advises on vaccines, told AFP.
“We know that mutations came to Israel from all sorts of places,” he said, adding that some ultra-Orthodox Jewish institutions violated the rules that close schools.
“Weddings, gatherings, ultra-Orthodox schools – all of this has an adverse effect on increasing morbidity and caused this significant outbreak,” said Dr. Lev.
More than half a million cases have been reported and 4,005 people have died in Israel since the pandemic began.
AFP of additional reports
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