A single shot of the Pfizer or Oxford vaccine offers dramatic protection against hospital admission and severe disease in older people, according to a new study from Public Health England (PHE).
Health Secretary Matt Hancock hailed the “exciting” real-world data which found either vaccine is more than 80% effective at preventing hospital admission around three to four weeks after the first dose.
England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the data offered a glimpse of how the vaccine programme “is going to hopefully take us into a very different world in the next few months”.
The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, included more than 7.5 million people aged 70 and over in England.