Covid news - live: Single jab cuts elderly hospital admissions by 80% as Hancock defends UK quarantine policy

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there was “exciting new data” showing the effectiveness of the vaccines.

He told a Downing Street press conference the data showed that “a single shot of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or of the Pfizer vaccine works against severe infection among the over-70s with a more than 80% reduction in hospitalisations”.

“This is extremely good news,” Mr Hancock said.

“In fact, the detailed data show that the protection that you get from catching Covid 35 days after a first jab is even slightly better for the Oxford jab than for Pfizer, albeit both results are clearly very strong.”

The results “may also help to explain why the number of Covid admissions to intensive care units among people over 80 in the UK have dropped to single figures in the last couple of weeks”.

Both the Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines have been found to be highly effective in reducing infections among older people aged 70 years and over - Public Health England has announced.

The body found that since January protection against symptomatic cases of the virus four weeks after the first dose ranged between 57 and 61 per cent for one dose of Pfizer and between 60 and 73 per cent for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

In the over 80s the data suggested a single dose was more than 80 per cent effective at preventing hospitalisation, around 3 to 4 weeks after the jab.

Dr Mary Ramsay, PHE Head of Immunisation, said: “This adds to growing evidence showing that the vaccines are working to reduce infections and save lives.

“While there remains much more data to follow, this is encouraging and we are increasingly confident that vaccines are making a real difference.”

England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said he expected “in time” the vaccines to lower levels of disease across the country, reduce the likelihood of infections getting into the older and more vulnerable population and - if they did get infected - cases were more likely to be milder.

But he said “the problem isn’t fixed yet”.

“There’s a lot to look forwards too,” he said.

“It’s very tempting to just go, ‘Right, we’ve seen the results, that means the problem is fixed’.

“The problem isn’t fixed yet but we definitely have identified a way of fixing the problem and the early data show us how to do that and where to advance from here.”

England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the latest scientific data had “vindicated” the UK’s decision to give the AstraZeneca vaccine to older people.

Some countries - most notably Germany - have refused to administer the vaccine to the over-65s because of a lack of testing data on older age groups.

However, Prof Van-Tam said the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation had taken the view that it was “not immunologically plausible” the vaccine would work in younger age groups but not older ones.

“We took a view that it almost certainly would work. The PHE (Public Health England) data have clearly vindicated that approach today,” he said.

“I am not here to criticise other countries but to say that I think in time the data emerging from our programme will speak for itself and other countries will doubtless be very interested in it.”

A single dose of Covid vaccine cuts the risk of hospital admission among older adults by as much as 80 per cent, new official figures suggest.

The deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said the latest data on vaccines showed the decision to prioritise a mass rollout of first doses had “undoubtably saved a large number of lives”.

Prof Anthony Harnden of the JCVI, said:  “These real world results from Public Health England demonstrate a very good effect from both vaccines after the first dose.

“The Covid vaccination strategy was designed to prevent as many deaths as quickly as possible. The bold decision to vaccinate more older people by delaying the second dose has undoubtedly saved a large number of lives.”

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