EXPERTS have unveiled more proof both Covid jabs protect the elderly – and blasted European leaders for dragging their feet over using Oxford’s vaccine.
Just two weeks after getting one shot of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab, the risk of being hospitalised drastically falls in the over 80s, a University of Bristol study found.
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The latest data backs up the theory Britain’s bumper vaccine programme is going to pave the way for a successful lockdown lift.
It comes as EU leaders made sharp U-turns on using the AstraZeneca jab on people over 60 years old.
One dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was found to be 79.3 per cent effective at stopping hospitalisations in the most vulnerable from 14 days.
And a single shot of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab was found to be 80.4 per cent effective at protecting against severe symptoms 14 days onwards.
Professor Adam Finn, chief investigator on the study, slammed countries who have shied away from using the AstraZeneca jab.
He said: “The UK is well forward, this age group have been immunised now, we’re down into people in their 60s, we’ve achieved 90 per cent uptake.
“In the short term, the job’s done in the UK.
“But there are lots of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine available in European countries, and they are not being given to people over the age of 65, in some cases in countries over the age of 55, for lack of data.
‘GET ON WITH IT’
“Well, here are the data. There are data from Public Health England and Scotland and now from us, showing that you can save lives in elderly people by giving them a dose of AstraZeneca vaccine.
“And those countries need to get on and start doing that as fast as possible.
“We are very pleased to share these early results that show the UK Covid-19 vaccine programme is working better than we could have hoped.”
It follows results from studies in Scotland and England this week, which revealed a single dose of either jab could slash hospitalisations of OAPs by 80 per cent.
Prof Finn said the study had been carried out in a different way from that released this week by PHE, but had found very similar results.
He said: “I think what this does is provide confidence in the results overall. I think their results confirm ours and our results confirm theirs.”
He said he expects the effectiveness to be even higher in younger age groups.
Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, The Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia, said: “The main conclusion from this study is that a single dose of either the Oxford AstraZeneca or the Pfizer vaccine are both roughly equally effective at keeping elderly and frail people out of hospital and so reducing risk of death.
“Furthermore the balance of evidence is very strongly that both vaccines are roughly equally effective with the Oxford AstraZeneca maybe having a slight edge (though we will have to wait for much more date to know that for certain).”
On Tuesday, deaths dropped by 37 per cent in a week with 343 fatalities recorded.
Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, of the University of Cambridge, also said new data showed that deaths in the over-65s, many of whom have now been jabbed, are now halving every week.
He added: “We all sort of hoped something like this might happen – but frankly it is better than anyone expected.”
