Mixing Covid vaccines provides strong protection, study shows

PanARMENIAN.Net - Early results from a British vaccine study suggest that mixing different brands of vaccines can provoke a protective immune response against Covid-19. In the trial, volunteers produced high levels of antibodies and immune cells after getting one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and one dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford shot, The New York Times reports.

Administering the vaccines in either order is likely to provide potent protection, Dr. Matthew Snape, a vaccine expert at the University of Oxford, said at a news conference on Monday, June 28. “Any of these schedules, I think could be argued, would be expected to be effective,” he said.

Dr. Snape and his colleagues began the trial, called Com-COV, in February. In the first wave of the study, they gave 830 volunteers one of four combinations of vaccines. Some got two doses of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca, both of which have been shown to be effective against Covid-19. Others got a dose of AstraZeneca, followed by one of Pfizer, or vice versa.

For the first wave of volunteers, the researchers waited four weeks between doses. Studies have found that the AstraZeneca vaccine provides stronger protection if the second dose is delayed for up to 12 weeks, so the researchers are also running a separate 12-week trial which should deliver results next month.

The researchers found that volunteers reported more chills, headaches and muscle pain than people who get two doses of the same vaccine. But the side effects were short-lived.