Millions of people who have received the coronavirus injection must adhere to social distance rules if they are not to be compromised by locking restrictions, England’s deputy chief medical officer has warned.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said if those who received the vaccine start to lose weight because they are protected, it could lead those further down the priority list that need it. endanger the vaccine.
His warning came as the latest government figures show that the number receiving the first dose of the vaccine across the UK has exceeded 5.8 million with 478,248 more receiving the injection in one day.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Professor Van-Tam said it was not yet known whether people who received the vaccine could pass the virus on to others, even if they were protected from being sick themselves.
“So even after you have received both doses of the vaccine you may give Covid to someone else and then the distribution chains will continue,” he wrote.
“If you change your behavior you could still spread the virus, keep the number of cases high and put others at risk who need their vaccine but are further down the queue.
“Whether or not they have been vaccinated, it is vital that everyone follows national restrictions and public health advice, as protection can take up to three weeks to start and is unknown. We still have no idea what effect vaccines give.
“The vaccine has given us a lot of hope and we are in the final round of pandemic but for now, vaccinated or not, we need to follow the guidelines for a little longer.”
Professor Van-Tam has also hit back at doctors who have criticized the gap between the first and second doses of the vaccine widened to 12 weeks.
The British Medical Association has written to England’s chief medical officer urging reconsideration, saying that with regard to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a maximum gap of six weeks has been prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Professor Van-Tam said widening the gap was the quickest way to get the first dose to as many people as possible.
He said: “But none of these (who ask reasonable questions) will tell me: who on the list is at risk who should suffer more slowly on their first dose until someone else who has had one dose already (so most of what can get a second? ”
BMA council chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul said that while he understood the “rationale” behind the decision, no other country is taking a UK approach.
“We believe the flexibility offered by the WHO to extend to 42 days has been extended far too far to go from six weeks to 12 weeks,” he said.
“Of course, the protection will not go away after six weeks but we do not know what level of protection will be offered. We should not extract data where we do not have it. ”