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By Kate Kelland
LONDON, March 3 (Reuters) - British scientists urged
European countries to take note on Wednesday of interim data
showing what they described as "remarkable" effectiveness of a
single dose of Pfizer's or AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccines in
frail and elderly people.
The results from a surveillance project called AvonCAP,
funded by Pfizer, found that one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or
AstraZeneca shot was highly effective at preventing
symptomatic illness severe enough to lead to hospitalisation
among patients aged over 80 with multiple other illnesses.
The results add to other early findings from studies of
vaccine roll-outs in Israel, Scotland and England, which have
also pointed to high effectiveness from the first doses.
"Despite the frailty and age of these patients, one dose of
either Pfizer or the AstraZeneca vaccine is remarkably effective
at reducing hospitalisation and serious disease in these
individuals," said Catherine Hyams, a respiratory medicine
specialist at Bristol University who co-led the study.
Some European countries, including Germany, Italy and
France, are seeing a relatively slow roll-out of AstraZeneca's
COVID-19 vaccine as concerns about its efficacy, coupled with
authorities' recommendations that it be used only with the
under-65s, have undermined confidence.
Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics and the study's chief
investigator, said the results showed Britain's fast-paced COVID
vaccine roll-out "is working better than we could have hoped".
He said health authorities in other countries, where there
has been some reticence about deploying the vaccines in elderly
people, should recognise and act on these "important" results.
"This study is much more important for non-UK countries than
it is for the UK," he told reporters at a briefing. "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 ... for lack of data," he said.
"Well, here are the data ... showing that you can save lives
in elderly people," he added. "And those countries need to get
on and start doing that as fast as possible."
The AvonCap findings showed that a single dose of the
Pfizer-BioNTech shot, which began roll-out in Britain on Dec. 8,
was 71.4% effective from 14 days at preventing hospitalisation
among patients with a median age of 87 years, while a single
dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was rolled out from Jan.
4, was 80.4% effective by the same measures among patients with
an average age of 88.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Jane Merriman and Nick
Macfie)
