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The Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 Shots Will Be Combined to See They Produce a Stronger Immune Response Together

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BM.GE
08.12.20 17:00
584
The UK is planning to combine the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines in trials next year to see if both shots together produce a stronger immune response than giving them individually.
 
Patients who participate in January's "mix and match" trial — which will begin when AstraZeneca and Oxford's vaccine is approved, will receive one dose of the Pfizer shot and another of the Oxford shot.
 
Pfizer's vaccine has been approved in the UK, and the first shots were given out Tuesday. The US is awaiting approval of the shot, and Americans could be vaccinated as early as Friday.
 
If the vaccine developed by US biotech firm Moderna gets approval from UK regulators, this will also be included in the trial, Kate Bingham, the head of the British government's vaccine taskforce, said Tuesday.
 
Both Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccine were 95% effective in late-stage trial results. Oxford and AstraZeneca said their vaccine was 62% effective if patients get two full doses, but 90% effective when they get a half-strength version of the first dose.
 
Kate Bingham, chair of the UK's vaccine taskforce, said: "The idea is that you can maximize the strength of that immune response to protect people.
"It means mix and matching vaccines," she said at the launch of a report on the group's progress.
 
"So you do a prime with one vaccine and then the second — whether it's 28 days or two months or whatever the agreed periods would be — would be with a different vaccine."
 

Both vaccines work in different ways. Typically, mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer's, produce a greater antibody response, whereas viral-based vaccines such as AstraZeneca's give a bigger cellular response.

"Antibodies block the uptake of viruses into cells and the cellular T-cells identify those cells that have been infected and take them out. You ideally want to have both," Bingham said.