Ross Clark Ross Clark

New Oxford data supports UK vaccine strategy

Ever since the Oxford-AstraZeneca team announced the results of its Phase 3 trials last November, there has been a suspicion among some that their vaccine is the poor relation of the messenger RNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna. It might be cheap compared with the others, it might be easy to store and transport, but the results published last November indicated that it had an efficacy of 70 per cent compared with over 90 per cent for Pfizer and Moderna. Even that was questioned when it was pointed out that the 70 per cent figure was arrived at by mixing different trials, involving different quantities of vaccine. When a half dose was followed by a full dose (a regime which occurred as a result of a mix up of doses) it seemed to have an efficacy rate of 90 per cent, yet when two full doses were given that dropped to 62 per cent.

You don’t have to be Emmanuel Macron — who claimed last week that the Oxford-AZ jab was ‘quasi-ineffective’ for the over-65s — to wonder whether it is an inferior vaccine to the others. Sweden joined Poland and Germany in deciding they will not administer it to the over-65s — and they have a point in claiming that there is a lack of data on use in that age group. Moreover, questions have been asked about the UK approach to vaccination, with the length of time between shots extended to up to 12 weeks in an attempt to get as many first doses administered in as short a time as possible.

On Tuesday, however, Oxford University put out a pre-print of a paper for the Lancet which appears to show that a single dose of the Oxford-AZ vaccine is more efficacious than the initial results suggested and seems to justify the government’s decision to delay the second jab.

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