Derek Lowe on the UK authorities’ plan to spread out the two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
‘The UK government is thus running a real-time experiment on its population in the hopes that the benefits of a first dose of its available vaccines (AZ/Oxford, Pfizer/BioNTech) will outweigh the risks of then messing with the dosing schedule. The horrible part is that there’s a good case to be made that running this big experiment (and taking on the risk of lowering the overall effect of the two-dose schedule) is still the right decision. Things are bad. But don’t pretend it’s not an experiment, or that we know what the outcome will be. This is a desperation move, and it’s a terrible thing that such a strategy has made it to the top of the list. I hope it works.’
(tags: vaccines vaccination covid-19 uk dosing)