A trial being conducted in the UK to see how well people react when they are given two different types of COVID-19 vaccines for the first and second doses has been expanded to include the Moderna and the Novavax shots, the Oxford Vaccine Group announced on Wednesday
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th April, 2021) A trial being conducted in the UK to see how well people react when they are given two different types of COVID-19 vaccines for the first and second doses has been expanded to include the Moderna and the Novavax shots, the Oxford Vaccine Group announced on Wednesday.
The Comparing COVID-19 Vaccine schedule Combinations (Com-Cov) study led by the University of Oxford began in February with volunteers who were given a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine followed by the Pfizer's and vice versa.
"If we have flexibility in which vaccines we give for the second dose or later doses it massively increases the flexibility and resilience of the immunisation programme and would mean we could roll these vaccines out more quickly - not just in the UK, but internationally," Oxford Vaccine Group chief investigator, Matthew Snape, told BBC's Radio 4.
According to the expert, some studies suggest a combination might give better immune response overall.
He said that they now hope to recruit 1,050 volunteers over 50 years of age who had already received one dose of the AstraZeneca/Oxford or the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines in the past eight to 12 weeks.
The Moderna vaccine was recently added to the UK's immunization program, which has already seen over 32,2 million people given at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while the Novavax drug is still waiting for the green light from the UK regulator.
