The UK’s decision to delay giving a second vaccine dose has so far been ”vindicated”, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) special envoy on Covid-19 has said.
David Nabarro said the vaccine rollout in the UK had been a “great lesson for the rest off the world”.
Certainly what’s happening with this virus is we are leaning all the time,” he told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme. “Thank you British scientists.”
“Isn’t it wonderful it has turned out, as a result of the UK’s bravery frankly, that this extended interval seems to be associated with even greater protection.”
He added: “Yes I think the UK’s approach, so far, has been vindicated.”
But Nabarro said once all over-50s in the UK have been inoculated the British government should consider sharing vaccines with poorer countries.
The UK has over 400 million doses of vaccine on order, more than enough to vaccinate the entire population.
“At the moment politicians believe that their primary duty is to make sure they get vaccines to perhaps everybody in their countries,” Nabarro said.
“We think citizens can perhaps talk to their politicians and say ‘wait a minute, we’re actually part of the world, we think the first priority is to make sure everybody in the world gets what they need’.”
He added: “Do we want to be remembered as a world where those who had the cash could afford to vaccinate their whole populations and countries that didn’t have the cash had to cope with a possibly quite dramatically increasing death rate among their health workers? I don’t think so.”
The government faced criticism over its decision to delay the timing of the second dose of Covid-19 vaccines until 12 weeks after the first, with some raising concerns over the level of immunity from a single injection.
In early January the WHO said there was “very little empiric data” to support the UK’s move.
But a study by the University of Oxford published last week found its coronavirus vaccine with AstraZeneca offers protection of 76% up to 12 weeks after a single dose and may reduce transmission by 67%.
A single dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine has also been found to be “highly protective” after three weeks.
Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) said the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was still effective after 21 days without a “top up” dose in the recommended time frame.
While it is not yet known how long immunity lasted beyond 21 days without a second dose, researchers said it was “unlikely” to majorly decline during the following nine weeks.