These are the UK coronavirus stories you need to know about today.
Vaccines Saved More Than 6000 Lives
Estimates by Public Health England (PHE) suggest the COVID-19 vaccination programme prevented 6100 deaths in over-70s by the end of February. Separate Warwick University modelling estimates vaccination prevented around 6600 deaths across all age groups.
Dr Mary Ramsay, PHE head of immunisation, said: “While the vaccines have a striking impact on mortality, we don’t yet know how much these vaccines will reduce the risk of you passing COVID-19 onto others.”
Commenting via the Science Media Centre, Professor Sheila Bird, formerly programme leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said the paper was “light on detail. In particular, how the weighting of ‘vaccine impact’ changed over time because the mix of vaccine-types changed; and whether impact was differentiated by whether the second Pfizer/BioNTech dose was delivered on the 1/22 days randomised-trial schedule”.
Meanwhile, NHS England data show 23.4% of eligible staff at care homes for older adults haven’t yet had a first vaccine dose.
Strong Immune Response
Universities of Sheffield and Oxford PITCH preprint study found that 99% of 237 healthcare workers had a robust antibody and T cell response after one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Those who’d previously had COVID-19 generated a stronger immune response.
Study author, Dr Thushan de Silva, University of Sheffield, said: “Our study is one of the largest and most comprehensive accounts of the immune response to one dose of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine comparing previously infected and infection-naive individuals.
“Our results demonstrate that T cell and antibody responses induced by natural infection are boosted significantly by a single dose of vaccine. While the response to a single dose was lower in infection-naïve individuals, it was still equivalent or better than the immunity in previously infected individuals before it is boosted by vaccination.”
Europe
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) will convene an ad hoc expert group to provide “additional input” into the assessment of thromboembolic events occurring in European Union (EU) residents who have received AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Meanwhile, the EU has told AstraZeneca to “catch up” on vaccine deliveries in Europe before exporting doses to other countries.
University of Stirling preprint research suggests the suspension of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in many European countries did not impact on UK vaccination intentions. However, Dr David Comerford from the Behavioural Science Centre said: “This is not to say that the UK public were not concerned by the news. Google Trends data shows increasing search activity for the terms ‘vaccine’ and ‘safe’ as the AstraZeneca suspension story was unfolding, but that concern did not translate into mistrust of the vaccination programme in the UK.”
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