Astra reinforcement is necessary to increase protection, according to study

Protection against severe illness after two doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s COVID-19 vaccine begins to decline approximately three months after the second dose, according to a study highlighting the need for boosters.

The researchers analyzed data from 2 million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil and assessed the risk of severe COVID cases, including hospitalizations and deaths, three months after the second dose. They did not test Astra’s vaccine against the fast-spreading omicron variant, which was not circulating at the time.

“We find declining vaccine protection against hospital admissions and deaths from COVID-19 in both Scotland and Brazil“Said the researchers in the study, published in The Lancet on Monday. They said providing booster doses of the vaccine should be considered for people who have received the initial treatment of Astra’s vaccine, developed in conjunction with the University of Oxford.

Britain, which relied on Astra’s vaccine for primary inoculation of people over 40, is already launching the rapid launch of mRNA booster vaccines from Pfizer Inc. and its partner. BioNTech SE, The Moderna Inc. Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes that strengthening the population’s immunity can help curb the spread of the omicron and ease mounting pressure on the country’s National Health Service.

A growing body of evidence suggests that it will take three cycles of the world’s most widely used COVID vaccines to generate enough antibodies to the omicron variant. However, antibodies are only part of a person’s immune defense, and T cells also play a role, making it difficult to assess the efficacy of the current generation of omicron vaccines.

The executive director of Astra, Pascal Soriot, said last month that the company’s vaccine could be the reason the UK was doing better with COVID hospitalizations than Europe was at the time. He suggested that the slower-developing T-cell response could mean the vaccine was providing longer-lasting immunity in the elderly, though he said more data was needed, a view shared by scientists.

Penny Ward, professor of pharmaceutical medicine at the King’s College of London, said that although the document gives a “quite alarming impression at first glance“, It also shows that there is”a sustained effectiveness of the vaccine to prevent hospitalization and death from COVID of at least 50% during the period of the study ”.

He added that the data reiterates the importance of people “Get out there and get your reinforcement as quickly as possible. “