Daily US Times: The chances of becoming infected by Covid-19 fell sharply after a first dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines, a UK study has found.

The Covid-19 vaccines worked just as well in the over-75s and those with underlying health conditions, as other people.

The University of Oxford and Office for National Statistics (ONS) research also found a strong antibody response in all age groups from either jab.

They said everyone showed some response to both vaccines, they said.

The research is based on virus tests from 370,000 people in the general UK population – one of the largest to date.

The latest study provides further real-world evidence that the vaccines being used in the United Kingdom to protect against Covid-19 are effective at protecting people against coronavirus infections.

In the first study, people who had been vaccinated with a single dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines were 65% less likely to get a new Covid infection.

Three weeks after their dose, given between December 2020 and early April 2021, coronavirus infections with symptoms fell by 74%, while infections with no reported symptoms fell by 57%.

Those who had received a second vaccine dose of Pfizer were 90% less likely to be infected by the disease. The same calculation could not be made for AstraZeneca because too few people in the study had received a second dose as its rollout started later.

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