Medical officers in the UK recently announced that the second doses of the COVID-19 vaccines should be given at the end of 12 weeks rather than in 3-4 weeks, which was the initially planned interval. What is the evidence for changing the schedule?
Dear Savvas Lampridis , to date the evidence for extending the dosing interval of COVID-19 vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine does not exist. The trials done until now did not compare different dose spacing. However , Experiments of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine with small participant numbers did include different spacing between first and second dose, finding that a longer gap 8 weeks to 12 weeks led to a greater immune response in recipients. But we should keep in mind that the participant number is small. The reason for such decisions can be massive vaccine shortage , at this time. I send my best wishes to UK and Good luck.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Medicine
- Disease
- Infectious Diseases
- Immunization
- Vaccination
- Vaccines