France has followed Germany and Austria’s decision to not administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to anyone over the age of 64, stating that there was not enough data on the Oxford vaccine’s effectiveness on the over-65 age group. However, the Health Secretary backed the UK’s decision and stated that the three-month gap between AstraZeneca doses leads to greater protection from the coronavirus.
Mr Hancock said: “The news overnight on the Oxford vaccine demonstrates that the vaccine protects you and it helps to cut the transmission of the disease across the whole community.
“It shows that the vaccine works and it works well.
“This figure of a two-thirds reduction in transmission is better than I expected.
“It is really good news for everybody and it just shows that the strategy has been right of backing those vaccines.
“The other finding in this report is that with the 12-week gap between the first and second dose you actually get a stronger overall protection than if you have a shorter gap.”
On Wednesday morning, Mr Hancock also admitted that the Pfizer vaccine needs two doses in order to reach the desired efficacy levels against the South African coronavirus variant.
The Health Secretary stated that some protection against the variant is good news as he had originally feared the UK’s vaccines would not work at all against it.
He said: “The fact that there is some protection of the South African variant is good news, there was a fear that the vaccines would not work at all against that variant whereas there does seem to be some protection.”
He added: “Of course against these new variants we made need boosters of a slightly adjusted vaccine as well in the same way we do for flu each year.
“We are working with the companies on developing those and ensuring that they can get regulated and be used more quickly than the first time around.”
More to follow…
