The launch of the vaccine in the UK is accelerating, but doctors want a faster second dose

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s COVID-19 vaccination push picked up on Saturday with 5.9 million people now receiving a first dose, but doctors have challenged the government over its policy of postponing a second shot of the vaccine Pfizer up to 12 weeks.

The British government is differentiating between the first and second blow, as it is trying to ensure that as many people as possible are given some protection against an initial dose of vaccine.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Friday that the new UK version of COVID-19 could be associated with a higher level of mortality, as the number of deaths in the country of COVID-19 is approaching 100,000 – reaching 97,329 on Saturday.

But in a letter to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, Chris Whitty, the British Medical Association said leaving the 12-week interval for the Pfizer vaccine was against World Health Organization rules.

They urged the government to reduce the gap between doses of Pfizer to a maximum of six weeks.

The vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and BioNTech, have warned that they have no evidence that their vaccine will continue to be protective if the second dose is given more than three weeks after the first.

Leaving a 12-week gap allows the British vaccination program to proceed quickly.

Government data released on Saturday showed that 5.86 million people now receive a first dose of vaccine, after 478,248 people had jab in the last 24 hours.

Whitty said on Friday that the longer wait between doses was a “public health decision” aimed at vaccinating many people and based on the fact that the vast majority of protection comes from the first shot.

The Department of Health and Social Welfare said the decision on the 12-week gap was made after a “thorough review of the data” and was in line with the recommendations of the four top medical officers in the UK.

The United Kingdom uses the Pfizer vaccine and another from AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca claimed the gap between the jabs, saying that the data show that the gap of 8 to 12 weeks is a “sweet spot” 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 about what the evidence showed.

“The question of whether it is more dangerous in terms of mortality I think is still open,” Graham Medley, a professor of infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the BBC.