Virus World

The bivalent vaccine will now form part of the booster campaign to be rolled out this autumn.  Ministers say the vaccine will now form part of the autumn booster campaign. Moderna thinks 13 million doses of its new vaccine will be available this year, but 26 million people are eligible for some form of booster. Health officials say people should take whichever booster they are offered as all jabs provide protection. The original vaccines used in the pandemic were designed to train the body to fight the first form of the virus which emerged in Wuhan, in China, at the end of 2019. The Covid virus has since mutated substantially, with a stream of new variants emerging that can dodge some of our immune defences. They have caused large surges in cases around the world. The original vaccines still provide strong protection against becoming severely ill or dying, but companies are tweaking them to match the virus as it evolves. Cases of coronavirus are currently falling in the UK. In mid-to-late July, around 2.5 million people tested positive for coronavirus.

ONS figures show 51,281 Covid deaths between January and July, with 458 dying at least 21 days after second dose.  People who were fully vaccinated accounted for just 1.2% of all deaths involving Covid-19 in England in the first seven months of this year. The figures, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), have been seized on as proof of the success of the vaccine programme. The figures show a total of 51,281 deaths involving Covid-19 in England between 2 January and 2 July, of which 38,964 were of unvaccinated people.  Of the total Covid-related deaths, 458 (about 0.9%) were of people who died at least 21 days after their second vaccine dose. Just 256 deaths (0.5%) were of people who were fully vaccinated and had their first positive PCR test at least 14 days after their second dose. No vaccine is 100% effective against Covid-19, and health authorities have made it clear that some deaths of vaccinated individuals are to be expected. Public Health England (PHE) has estimated that two-dose effectiveness against hospital admission with infections from the Delta variant – which is now the UK’s dominant strain – has been around 94%.  However, the figures on Monday underlined that the risk of death involving Covid-19 is consistently lower for people who have received two doses compared with one dose or no vaccination at all.

A detailed breakdown of data was made available for 252 of the 256 people who died after having received both jabs and who first tested positive at least 14 days after the second dose. They are what the ONS describes as “breakthrough” deaths. It shows that just over three-quarters of these deaths (76.6%) occurred in those who were clinically extremely vulnerable – a slightly higher proportion than for other Covid-19 deaths (74.5%) and deaths not involving Covid-19 (69.7%). Of the breakthrough deaths, 61.1% occurred in males, which is higher than for other Covid-19 deaths (52.2%) and deaths not involving Covid-19 (48.5%), while 13% were among people who were immunocompromised. Experts emphasised the importance of context in terms of the data, which covered a period when the seven-day average daily UK deaths varied between six and more than 1,200 per day. Trends were increasing at the end of the ONS study period, when rates were about 25 per day, while daily death rates are now consistently over 100 per day.  Dr Duncan Robertson, a data analyst at Loughborough University who has been focusing on Covid-19 modelling and analysis, said: “By definition, as the proportion of vaccinated people increases, fewer remain in the unvaccinated category. In the extreme, if everyone were vaccinated, 100% of deaths would be of vaccinated people, just as before the vaccine rollout, 0% of deaths would be of vaccinated people.” But he added: “What is clear from the ONS data is the significance of being fully vaccinated – full vaccination offers very high – but not perfect - protection against death, where only having a first dose offers significantly less protection.”