JCVI announces only 500,000 immunocompromised Brits should get Covid booster vaccines
JCVI announces only 500,000 immunocompromised Brits should get Covid booster vaccines – despite data from Israel showing big dip in hospitalisations after they were introduced to all over-60s
Between 400,000 and 500,000 of most vulnerable Brits eligible for doses, including leukemia, HIV patients JCVI said there was evidence many of these people did not mount a strong immune response after two shotsThe expert panel has delayed a wider booster programme, claiming it needs more evidence before signing off
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Just half a million Britons with severely suppressed immune systems will be invited for a third Covid jab after the Government’s vaccine advisory panel finally signed off on plans for boosters doses tonight.
Between 400,000 and 500,000 of the most vulnerable patients — including those with leukemia, HIV and organ transplant patients — will be made eligible for the top-up doses when the rollout expands in the coming days.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said there was evidence to suggest a significant number of these people did not mount a strong immune response after their first two injections.
Adults aged 18 and above will be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jab even if they were initially immunised with AstraZeneca‘s, after a number of studies showed the mRNA vaccines make safe and effective third doses.
Immunosuppressed children aged 12 to 17 will only be offered Pfizer’s vaccine due to a lack of safety and efficacy data on the other jabs in this age group.
The JCVI said a third dose was ‘very unlikely’ to cause any harm to immunocompromised people and had the potential to protect them, which swung the balance in favour of revaccination.
However, the group insisted the new recommendation is separate from a broader booster programme which would target healthy elderly people and other vulnerable Britons with underlying illnesses.
The JCVI said it was waiting on more evidence that these people would benefit from another dose before green lighting those plans and claimed that the ‘vast majority’ of the population still had high protection.
There has been growing pressure for the UK to follow Israel, which has managed to curb rising hospital admissions after rolling out boosters for over-60s in July. The country has since expanded the scheme to all over-30s.
A number of studies in the UK and US have also suggested that vaccine effectiveness is already waning in elderly groups. Health Secretary Sajid Javid welcomed the announcement tonight but said the Government was continuing to plan for a wider booster programme to begin this month.
Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt earlier today called for boosters ‘not just for the clinically vulnerable but for everyone’, citing Israel’s success and evidence of dwindling immunity.
Covid cases remain stubbornly high in the UK — there are about 35,000 each day on average — and hospital rates have been creeping up as the country moves into the colder months and schools go back.
Just half a million Britons with severely suppressed immune systems will be invited for a third Covid jab after the Government’s vaccine advisory panel finally signed off on plans for boosters doses tonight. Patients who are eligible are listed above
The decision was made on the back of results from the Octave study published last week. It found about one in 10 in the vulnerable group failed to generate any detectable Covid antibodies four weeks after their second dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca. A further 30 per cent generated a significantly lower antibody response than healthy people, according to the study published as a pre-print in The Lancet
Between 400,000 and 500,000 of the most vulnerable patients — including those with leukemia, HIV and organ transplant patients — will be made eligible for the top-up doses when the rollout expands in the coming days. The UK’s rollout has seen more than 90 doses in total administered so far
There had been growing pressure for Britain to go with a more broad booster programme like in Israel. Professor Eran Segal, a mathematician at the country’s Weizmann Institute, tweeted today that hospitalisations had started to fall just two weeks after the top-up campaign started. This graph shows how Covid hospitalisations have started to level off in Israel just two weeks after its booster programme began. When the drive was started hospitalisations were doubling every week. Predictions suggested this would continue (green line). But just two weeks after the jabs were given out actual hospitalisations have slowed (blue line)
There are more than 3.7million extremely clinically vulnerable people in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics. Of these, around 500,000 are classified as immunosuppressed
Immunosuppressed patients who were made eligible tonight are being advised to wait at least eight weeks after their second dose before scheduling the third appointment.
They should also consult with their doctor about the best time to get the top-up vaccine to give their body the best chance of a strong immune response.
For example, it is preferable to give a vaccine dose before someone undergoes chemotherapy, rather than during their treatment.
Professor Wei Shen Lim, chair of Covid immunisation for the JCVI, said: ‘We want people with severely suppressed immune systems to have the best chance of gaining protection from Covid via vaccination.
‘Therefore, we are advising they have a third vaccine dose on top of their initial two doses, as we hope this will reduce their risk of severe outcomes such as hospitalisation and death.’
Officials have insisted the new recommendation is different from a booster programme because the third doses being offered now are to ‘top up’ immunity in people who never had a good response after two injections.
A study by King’s College London last week suggested vaccine immunity against infection is already waning. Scientists monitored break-through Covid infections in 1.2million people who had received two doses of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine. They found that immunity wanes over time. For the Pfizer jab (blue line) it dropped from 88 per cent protection against infection to 74 per cent up to six months after the second dose. And for the AstraZeneca jab (pink line) it dropped from 77 per cent to 67 per cent five months after the second dose. Experts suggested the effectiveness could drop to 50 per cent by the winter
According to a study being reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, protection against hospital admission from the virus drops to as low as 75 per cent in under a year in some vulnerable people, from 95 per cent shortly after vaccination. Pfizer’s (blue could be as low as 75% in over-75s) while Moderna’s is around 80% in that age group
This is different from a booster, they claim, which is something you give to people who have generated good response to two sometime later in order to extend duration.
An announcement on the true booster programme is expected in the coming weeks and could include people with less severe immune problems, as well as the very elderly.
No decision has been given either on any extension of the vaccine programme to include all healthy 12 to 15-year-olds.
Mr Javid said he has accepted the JCVI’s recommendation for third doses but would continue to plan for a booster programme.
He said: ‘We know people with specific conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 may have received less protection against the virus from two vaccine doses.
‘I am determined to ensure we are doing all we can to protect people in this group and a third dose will help deliver that.
‘The NHS will contact people as soon as possible to discuss their needs and arrange an appointment for a third dose where clinically appropriate.
‘This is not the start of the booster programme – we are continuing to plan for this to begin in September to ensure the protection people have built from vaccines is maintained over time and ahead of the winter.
‘We will prioritise those most at risk to Covid-19, including those who are eligible for a third primary vaccine, for boosters based on the final advice of the JCVI.’
Data from Israel has bolstered calls for booster doses to be dished out urgently. The country, which has been ravaged by a third wave despite its world-leading roll-out, has seen the number of seriously ill patients start to tail off over the past week — despite cases only starting to fall in the past few days.
Israel started to offer over-60s — who are the most at risk of being hospitalised if they catch Covid — third jabs at the start of August. Last week it expanded the drive to everyone who’s already had two doses.
One of Britain’s top Covid experts, Professor Paul Hunter, yesterday said he saw no reason ‘whatsoever’ why it had taken No10’s advisers so long to sign off on booster dose plans. The infectious disease expert, from the University of East Anglia, called for over-80s and immunocompromised people to get their shots ‘pretty soon’.
But despite calls to hurry up and act before the next uptick in cases, the JCVI is still dithering over exactly who should be eligible for the third injections.
The group is expected to recommend the third shots for people with severely weakened immune systems, which may only include several hundred thousand Britons. A SAGE adviser today repeated the claim that booster jabs should be for most vulnerable and not widespread.
University College London epidemiologist and SAGE member Professor Andrew Hayward told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morinng Britain needed to be ‘very careful’ about how it rolled out booster shots.
‘I think there is a case for vaccinating the most vulnerable again with booster doses,’ he said.
‘But that still leaves the UK massively over-ordered in terms of the amount of vaccines that it has, and still conservatively leaves somewhere between 100-200million doses that it could donate by the end of the year.’
Professor Hayward also called on Britain to help boost the vaccination drive around the world.
He said: ‘If rich countries can’t sort out a problem like vaccinating the world, what hope have we got in pulling together to sort out a complex problem like climate change?
‘This really is an opportunity for global leadership. This is a relatively simple technical problem that can be solved with the political will and resource.’
