UK’s Hancock: Highly confident that enough people will be vaccinated by spring to exit the pandemic

Comments by UK health secretary, Matt Hancock

We’ll see about that. As the vaccines are being rolled out, it is easy for lawmakers to talk things up right now but delivering on those expectations will be another matter.

In fact, the UK government has done a rather poor job on that front throughout the whole crisis so there’s that to consider when reading into the remark by Hancock above.

As for the latest on the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, it is also one that requires two doses with the timing from the first to the second dose taking up to 12 weeks.

The government has announced that they will prioritise giving the first dose of the vaccine to those in the most high-risk groups, rather than trying to provide two doses in as short a time as possible. Putting things into context, from the announcement earlier:

As announced on 23 November 2020, the primary efficacy endpoint based on a pooled analysis showed that the vaccine was 70.4% (confidence interval: 54.8% to 80.6%) effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 occurring more than 14 days after receiving two doses of the vaccine. A secondary efficacy endpoint of prevention of severe disease demonstrated no cases of severe infections or hospitalisations in the vaccine group.