Two covid-19 vaccines approved in UK for potential use as booster shots
The Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech covid-19 vaccines have been approved as safe and effective for use as a third shot by UK regulator the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). But a general booster campaign has not yet been recommended by the body that advises the UK government on who should receive vaccines, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). “This is an important regulatory change as it gives further options for the vaccination programme. It will now be for the JVCI to advise on whether booster jabs will be given,” June Raine of the MHRA said in a statement.
The JCVI met yesterday to discuss results from a large UK trial called COV-Boost, comparing the results of giving seven different vaccines as booster doses. So far, the JCVI has only advised third shots for people who are severely immunocompromised – which it says are not boosters but top-ups, as this group may not have had strong immune responses to the first two jabs.
Meanwhile, Sarah Gilbert at the University of Oxford, who helped develop the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, has joined those saying a mass booster programme is not yet needed in the UK, and that supplies should be directed to low-income countries. She told The Telegraph that evidence suggests immunity is “lasting well”.