Healthcare workers in England have been told to reschedule appointments for the second dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech covid-19 vaccine after the government’s advisory committee decided that vaccinating as many people as possible with a first dose should be the priority.
The government has now said that people should receive their second dose of vaccine (whether the Oxford and AstraZeneca or the Pfizer BioNTech one) within 12 weeks of the first, rather than within a few weeks.
Healthcare professionals were informed of the change through a letter from NHS England on 30 December,1 following the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’s approval of the Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccine.2
The letter said, “Prioritising the first doses of vaccine for as many people as possible on the priority list will protect the greatest number of at-risk people overall in the shortest possible time and will have the greatest impact on reducing mortality, severe disease and hospitalisations and in protecting the NHS and equivalent health services. Operationally this will mean that second doses of both vaccines will be administered towards the end of the recommended vaccine dosing schedule of 12 weeks.”
“[The four UK chief medical officers] recognise that this will mean we need to reschedule second doses for most of our current first dose recipients, but for the reasons set out today by JCVI [the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] and the CMOs, doing so should substantially improve individual and population-level protection against covid-19 over the next three months.”