LONDON (AP) – Two UK studies released on Monday showed that COVID-19 vaccination programs are contributing to a sharp drop in hospitalizations, raising hopes that the fires will work as well in the real world as in carefully controlled studies.
Preliminary results from a study in Scotland found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduced hospital admissions by up to 85% four weeks after the first dose, while Oxford-AstraZeneca reduced admissions by up to 94%. In England, preliminary data from a study by health workers showed that the Pfizer vaccine reduced the risk of taking COVID-19 by 70% after one dose, which rose to 85% after the second.
“This new evidence shows that the jab protects you and those around you,” said British Health Secretary Matt Hancock. “It is important to see as much evidence as possible about the impact of the vaccine on protection and transmission, and we will continue to publish evidence as we gather it.”
The studies were published when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday set out plans to ease a blockade that has closed non-essential pubs, schools and shops since early January. The launch of the vaccine is essential to bring the country back to a certain sense of normalcy. More than 17.5 million have so far received a dose of vaccine – more than a third of the adult population in the UK.
Britain had the deadliest outbreak of coronavirus in Europe, with over 120,000 deaths.
Public Health England said its study on health workers suggests the vaccine may help prevent the virus from spreading “because you can’t spread the virus if you don’t have an infection.” The findings are based on COVID-19 testing every two weeks, which detects infections, whether or not someone has symptoms.
Wider population testing showed that the Pfizer vaccine was 57% effective in preventing symptomatic disease in people over the age of 80, three to four weeks after the first dose. It increased to over 85% after the second dose. In general, hospitalizations and deaths should be reduced by more than 75% after a vaccine dose, Public Health England said.
The agency said it was still monitoring the impact of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but “early data signals suggest that it provides good levels of protection from the first dose”.
UK regulators authorized the widespread use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on December 30, almost a month after they approved the Pfizer vaccine.
The study of Scotland was conducted by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland.
Preliminary findings were based on a comparison of people who received a dose of vaccine and those who had not yet been inoculated. The data were collected between 8 December and 15 February, a period in which 21% of the population of Scotland received the first vaccine.
“These results are very encouraging and have given us great reasons to be optimistic about the future,” said Professor Aziz Sheikh, director of the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh. “We now have national evidence – across the country – that vaccination provides protection against COVID-19 hospitalizations.”
About 650,000 people in Scotland received the Pfizer vaccine during the study and 490,000 received the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Usher Institute said. Because hospitalization data were collected 28 days after inoculation, hospitalization data came from a subset of 220,000 people who received the Pfizer vaccine and 45,000 who received the AstraZeneca shot.
External experts said that while the findings in Scotland were encouraging, they should be interpreted with caution due to the nature of this type of observational study. In particular, relatively few people were hospitalized after receiving the vaccines during the study period.
Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, urged policymakers on the pandemic to be cautious.
“It will be important that euphoria, especially from political sources who do not understand the uncertainty of numerical values, does not provoke premature decisions,” he said. “Prudent optimism is justified.”
Earlier this month, Israel reported encouraging results from people receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Six weeks after vaccinations for people over the age of 60 began, there was a 41% decrease in confirmed COVID-19 infections and a 31% decrease in hospitalizations, according to the country’s Ministry of Health.
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