Pharmacist Murtaza Abdulkarim (L) is administering a dose of AstraZeneca / Oxford Covid-19 vaccine to a patient in a temporary vaccination center equipped with pharmacists and pharmacists at the Al-Abbas Islamic Center in Birmingham, West Midlands, on 4 February, 2021.
Scarff Oils | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The first real-world data from the UK inoculation program provided insight into the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines.
The vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was the first vaccine to be approved and launched in the UK in December. Over 80 years, health workers and home care staff have been the first to be immunized. This was soon followed by the shooting developed by the British AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
Here are four diagrams that summarize how effective these vaccines are and how they play a role in fighting the pandemic:
Declining deaths in the over 85s
As the elderly were the first to be vaccinated, it is observed that Covid deaths decrease the fastest in these age groups. The chart below analyzes Covid’s deaths for Scotland, with a decline observed in the over-85s group just as the vaccination program began to pick up. Click here for full data.
An increase in antibodies
A blood test study published last week by Imperial College London showed that almost 14% of the British population now has antibodies against coronavirus. Although this does not necessarily mean immunity, what was interesting was the results from people who were vaccinated and how high their antibody levels were. 18,000 participants in the study of 155,000 people were vaccinated, and the results are in the chart below. Click here for full data.
A separate study in England found that the highest percentage of people who tested positive for antibodies were those aged 80 and over, at 41%, which statisticians said was “most likely due to the high rate vaccination in this group ”.
The real effectiveness of Pfizer photography
Public Health England has analyzed in detail how effective the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been in protecting against symptomatic diseases. The graph below shows that a dose is 57% effective in protecting against symptomatic Covid-19 disease in those over 80 years of age (28 days after the first dose).
The effectiveness of the vaccine is calculated using a mathematical statistic called the odds ratio, click here for complete data and methodology.
… and the AstraZeneca vaccine
Public Health Scotland has also collected data on the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for all age groups. The graph shows that by the fourth week after a first dose, Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines have been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization from Covid-19 by up to 85% and 94%, respectively. Click here for complete data and methodology.
Since the start of the vaccination, the United Kingdom has immunized all four priority groups targeted. It now aims to vaccinate all those over the age of 50 by mid-April and all adults by the end of July, two months before a previous target.
By Sunday, more than 20 million people had received the first dose of vaccine and nearly 800,000 had received both doses, according to government data.
The British vaccination program was widely regarded as a triumph in the midst of tragedy; The United Kingdom had the fifth highest number of infections worldwide, after the United States, India, Brazil and Russia, with over 4.1 million registered infections and 123,083 deaths, the fifth highest number of deaths in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
—Bryn Bache of CNBC contributed to this article.