LONDON (Reuters) – Britain allows people to be given shots of various COVID-19 vaccines at rare times, despite a lack of evidence about the level of immunity offered by mixing doses.
Moving away from other strategies around the world, the government said that people could be given a mix-and-match of two beats of COVID-19, for example if the same dose of vaccine was out of stock, according to instructions published on New Year’s Eve. “(If) the same vaccine is not available, or if the first result obtained is not known, it is reasonable to offer a dose of the locally available product to complete the record,” according to the instructions.
Mary Ramsay, head of vaccination at Public Health England, said this would only happen on very rare occasions, and that the government did not recommend a combination of vaccines, which require at least two doses to be given several weeks apart.
“Every effort should be made to give them the same vaccine, but where that is not possible it is better to give a second dose of another vaccine than none at all,” she said.
COVID-19 has killed more than 74,000 people in Britain – the second highest death toll in Europe, and health officials are racing to deliver doses to help stop the pandemic fears grow that the health service could overheat.
Earlier this week, the government rehabilitated emergency hospitals built at the start of the uprising while wards were filled with COVID-19 patients. Britain has been at the forefront of approving the new coronavirus vaccines, the first country to give emergency approval to Pfizer / BioNTech and the AstraZeneca / Oxford University vaccines last month.
Both vaccines are intended to be administered as two doses, given several weeks apart, but were not designed for combination.
New government guidelines said there is “no evidence of the interoperability of the COVID-19 vaccines although studies are ongoing”.
However, the council said that while every effort should be made to complete the dosing regimen with the same vaccine, if the patient is at “immediate high risk” or is considered “unlikely”. to be present again ”may be given different vaccines.
Britain sparked controversy earlier in the week by announcing plans to delay the rise of the coronavirus vaccine increase in a bid to ensure more people receive the more limited protection provided by a single dose.
U.S. infectious diseases chief Anthony Fauci said Friday he disagreed with the British approach to delaying the second dose for up to 12 weeks.
“I wouldn’t want to do that,” he told CNN. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.”
Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Edited by Helen Popper