UK Changes Vaccine Dose Interval from 4 to 12 Weeks..."First Dose to More People"

Policy to "Maximize Vaccination Expansion" Amid Variant Virus Spread
Expecting Increased Efficacy of AstraZeneca Vaccine

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Hyun-woo] The UK government has attracted international attention by announcing that it will extend the interval between COVID-19 vaccine doses from the existing 4 weeks to 12 weeks in order to expand vaccination amid the outbreak of new coronavirus variants. This is interpreted as an unavoidable desperate measure as the spread intensifies to the point where the healthcare system is exceeding its limits. Some expect this could be a way to extend the efficacy period of other vaccines along with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

According to foreign media such as The New York Times (NYT), on the 30th (local time), the UK government announced that it will delay the interval between the first and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from the existing 4 weeks to 12 weeks. The UK government explained that this would allow more people to receive the first dose. This is seen as a desperate measure considering the emergency situation where new COVID-19 cases in the UK are hitting record highs of 40,000 to 50,000 daily amid winter, along with the spread of variant viruses. In the UK, especially after Christmas, there are growing concerns that the healthcare system has exceeded its limits due to the surge in confirmed cases.

The NYT reported on the UK government's policy change, saying, "The UK has deviated from the vaccination strategies adopted by other countries around the world," and "An uncertain but highly impactful experiment to accelerate the vaccination pace has begun." The UK government expects that by delaying the second dose and increasing the number of first-dose recipients, the vaccination target population will expand to more than double the current size.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, said, "(It is a matter of) whether to vaccinate more people within a set time by releasing all vaccines or to keep vaccines in refrigerators for the second dose," adding, "From a population-level perspective rather than individual, the UK's approach will save more lives."

However, there are considerable counterarguments. Above all, there is currently almost no research data on the duration of efficacy after the first vaccine dose. At a press conference on the same day, the UK government explained the policy to extend the vaccination interval, stating, "When the interval for the AstraZeneca vaccine was extended to 12 weeks, the immune effect increased up to 80%," and introduced the related research results. Because of this, some interpret that the UK government announced the policy change together with the research results on the day the AstraZeneca vaccine was approved.

However, the AstraZeneca vaccine still faces unresolved controversies regarding immune efficacy, such as low-dose administration efficacy. When the clinical trial results were announced on the 23rd of last month, it was reported that reducing the first dose to half the standard amount increased efficacy from 62% to 90%, but the reason for the low-dose administration was revealed to be a mistake by the research team, raising reliability issues. On the same day, the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) also stated that the efficacy of low-dose administration has not yet been fully proven through complete analysis and did not approve that administration method at all.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.