A UK-based research found that six COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and elicit a significant immune response when administered as booster doses after two initial doses of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Phase 2 trial was conducted on seven vaccines to check their safety and efficacy as booster doses, the study published in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday said.
The UK Vaccine Taskforce and National Institute for Health Research funded the study.
The vaccines studied were those produced by Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, Valneva and Curevac. None of these vaccines posed safety concerns, revealed the study which was conducted on 2,878 adults over the age of 30.
Common side effects, mostly reported in younger people, were fatigue, headaches, and pain at the injection site. On being administered after 10 to 12 weeks of the two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, all seven vaccines boosted spike protein immunogenicity.
However, for those participants who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, all vaccines except Valneva’s boosted immunity.
According to Business Line, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been administered in over 180 countries, while 145 countries received the Pfizer vaccine. The impact of the boosters on long-term protection and immunological memory can only be revealed once more data is available after three months and one year of receiving the booster shot, the study said.
According to the study’s authors, research had not been done on how well the different booster combinations worked in preventing transmission, hospitalisation and death from COVID-19.
India uses AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccine, which is manufactured by the Serum Institute in Pune. The Serum institute also has the mandate to produce the Novavax vaccine.
Although J&J and Moderna vaccines, which were part of the study, have permissions to be used in India, they are not in the market yet. Two other vaccines used in India — Covaxin and the Russian vaccine Sputnik V – were not part of the UK study.
“When we set up the trial, we only had access to the vaccines that the UK Vaccine Taskforce had negotiated for the UK – timelines, unfortunately, did not allow the VTF to consider other vaccines for the trial,” Saul Faust, director of the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at University Hospital Southampton and head of the trial, told BusinessLine.
