Britain announced that it considers delaying the second shots of the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer and AstraZeneca. The plan is to extend the gap between the two shots to even 12 weeks. Although it sounds odd, the purpose is to assure the partial protection of the first dose to more people. Every person who chooses to get vaccinated needs to be injected twice with the same substance.
The New York Times writes that Dr. Fauci, who’s the US top infectious disease expert, doesn’t want to follow Britain’s approach regarding the COVID-19 vaccination. The famous doctor said it clear for CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen:
I would not be in favor of that,
We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.
Some experts were happy about Fauci’s claim, such as Dr. Eric Topol, who’s a clinical trials expert from the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California. Topol wrote, as cited by The New York Times:
That’s good because that it’s following what we know, the trial data with extraordinary 95 percent efficacy, avoiding extrapolation and the unknowns.
Over 10.8 million doses in 29 countries
According to Bloomberg, more than 10.8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered in 29 countries. The US is managing state allocations of the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as Moderna’s shot. The goal is to get 20 million doses distributed by early January.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved across North America, Europe and the Middle East. Tens of thousands of volunteers participated in the clinical tests, and both vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were found to be 95% effective.
The UK recently approved the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and University of Oxford. The country is facing a terrible surge of infections caused by a new strain of the coronavirus.
